
Class, 



PRESENTED BY 



Non-Biblical Systems 
OF Religion. 

a Si^mposium^ 

BY THE 

VEN. ARCHDEACON FARRAR, D.D., 

REV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A., 

REV. W. WRIGHT, D.D., 

RABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A., 

SIR WILLIAM MUIR, 

REV. EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A., 

T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D., 

THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON, 

REV. WM. NICOLSON, M.A. 



CINCINNATI: 

CRANSTON AND CURTS. 

NEW YORK: 

HUNT AND EATOK. 
1893. 



PEEFACE. 



npHE following articles are reprinted from the 
Homiletic Magazine, Tlie subject is of 
such importance that this volume will probably 
be heartily welcomed by those w^ho are studying 
Comparative Eeligionism, the questions connected 
with which, the recent notable advances of research, 
and our increasing facilities of intercourse with 
foreign nations, have brought, in an unmistakabL 
manner, to the front. Our aim has been to furnish 
comprehensive outlines of the chief religious systems 
of the world in a popular yet fairly accurate and 
scholarly w^ay. Many of the writers are recognised 
authorities in their respective departments. A few 
heathen systems — e.g,, Brahmanism and Zoroastri- 
anism — have not been touched upon, but the sources 

iii 



iv PREFACE. 

of information respecting them are both numerous 
and easy of access. Believing, as we do, that Chris- 
tianity has nothing to fear, but a great deal to gain, 
from an intelligent comparison of its claims with 
those of its predecessors and rivals, we commit the 
book, with all confidence, to the judgment of the 

public, 

Fredk. Hastings, 
A. F. MuiR, 

Editors of the "JlomUetic Magazine,** 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

PAGB 

IK TRODUCTION"— ETHNIC INSPIRATION . . i 
By the Ven. archdeacon FARRAR, D.D. 



11. 

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS . . . .17 

By the Rev. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A., Canon of 
Canterbury Cathedral. 

ni. 

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS— continued . . 35 
By the Rev. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A., Canon 
of Canterbury Cathedral. 

IV 

ANCIENT CANAANITE RELIGIONS ... 54 
By the Rev. WILLIAM WRIGHT, D.D., Secretary to 
the British and Foreign Bible Society, and Author of 
" The Empire of the Hittites," &c. 

V. 

EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS .... 69 
By the Rev. EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A., Professor of 
Classical Literature, New College, London. 



VI CONTENTS. 

VI. 

PAGK 

THE JEWISH FAITH . . . . . . 85 

By Rabbi G. J. EMANUEL, B.A., of .the Jews' Syna 
gogue, Birmingliam. 

VII. 

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY .... 104 

By Sir WILLIAM MUIR, Principal of Edinburgh Uni- 
varsity. 

VIII. 

BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY . . .115 

By T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D., Barrister-at- 
Law, and author of ** Buddhism," *'The Hibbert Lec- 
tures, 1 88 1." 

IX. 

ANCIENT SCANDIISTAVIAN RELIGION . . 135 

By the Hon. RASMUS B. ANDERSON, INTinister of 
the United States, Denmark, and Author of " Norse 
Mythology," ** America not Discovered by Columbus," 
&c. 

X. 

THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT SCANDINA- 
VIANS 153 

By the Hon. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 

XL 

POSITIVISM AS A RELIGION* . . . .178 

By the Rev. Professor J. RADFORD THOMSON, 
M.A., New College, London 



CONTENTS. iiv 

XII. 



FAOB 



THE ONE PURELY MOEAL RELIGION . .195 

By the Rev. W. NICOLSON, M.A., of St. Petersburg, 
Secretary to the British and Foreign Bible Society's 
Work in Russia. 

XIIL 

THE ONE PURELY MORAL B.^LIGlO'H—continued 214 
By the Rev. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 



NON-CHEISTIAN EELIGIONS. 



A SYMPOSIUM ON: WHAT IS THE RELATION OF 
NON-CHRISTIAN SYSTEMS TO BIBLICAL THEOLOGY? 



INTRODUCTION— ETHNIC INSPIRATION. 



I. 

By the Ven. Archdeacon FAERAR, D.D, 

1VT0 one who studies tlie movemeiits of theological 
thought can have failed to observe that, of 
late years, there has been a change of tone in the 
manner of regarding heathen religions. In past 
days it was common to speak of them with sweep- 
ing denunciation as doctrines of devils unrelieved 
by any ennobling elements. Since the beginning 
of this century, and partly, perhaps, in consequence 
of the influence of Lessing, there has been a tend- 
ency to search for the elements of truth which they 
all contain. Thus Brahmanism, dissevered from its 
later corruptions, has been examined in the light 



2 ETHNIC INSPIRATION. 

of the Vedas, and found to embody many noble 
principles. Buddhism has been studied with pro- 
found care, and though it must be freely admitted 
that it is a religion which is practically without a 
God, and without any doctrine of conscious immor- 
tality, it has yet been seen to be in possession of 
many deep spiritual truths. Our missionaries 
have testified that in many instances the lives of 
Buddhist priests set a conspicuous example of 
sincerity and purity. When the early Jesuit 
fathers first came in contact with the institutions 
of Buddhism, they were startled and even shocked 
by the close resemblance which they presented to 
those of Latin Christianity. They could find no 
other solution of the problem than diabolical cari- 
cature. It may be that the resemblance is due in 
part to the similarity of man's religious needs all 
over the world, and in part to an early difi*usion of 
Christian thought by Nestorian and other mis- 
sionaries. There are strong grounds for believing 
that the points of similarity between the story of 
Guatama and the records of our Lord in the Gospel 
of St. John are not purely accidental, and they 
may have been imported into Eastern life by 
wandering teachers at an age which nearly touches 
on the Christian era. On the other hand, we have 
no reason to reject the main contention of Mr. 



THE VEN. ARCHDEACON FAERAR. 3 

Herbert Spencer's new book on ecclesiastical insti- 
tutions, which is that many of the distinctive 
truths and practices of the faith are not without 
their analogue in many other forms of religion. 
There should be nothing to surprise us in such a 
fact. The heart and mind of man are the same 
over all the world, and the instinctive impulses 
of the human spirit have not been left unguided 
by the great Father of mankind. Let us again 
compare the treatment of Mohammedanism by re- 
cent writers and by those of an earlier period. 
Mohammed used always to be spoken of wdth 
execration as though he were an incarnation of all 
wickedness. ^'Blood-stained fanatic'' and '^wily 
impostor" were among the milder objurgations 
bestowed upon him, while Islam was condemned, 
without mitigation, as a sink of corruption. Deeper 
knowledge has shown us that a true picture of this 
religion of so many millions of our race cannot be 
painted in colours so entirely black. If we still 
condemn, we have learnt to do so with more fair- 
ness and discrimination. We can see that, among 
many crimes and vices, the Prophet of Arabia had 
also some noble qualities, and that the ideal of the 
true Moslem is very far indeed from being despi- 
cable or degraded. 

Multifarious as are the elements combined in 



4 ETHNIC IKSPIKATION. 

Scripture, and many as are the different tones in 
which it speaks to ns, yet even from the Old 
Testament we might have learnt that there is such 
a thing as Ethnic inspiration, and that God has 
not confined to the chosen people either His other 
gifts or His illuminating grace. More than one 
fragmentary record of heathen origin has been 
incorporated into Holy Writ. '' The spirit of man/' 
says Solomon, ^' is the candle of the Lord,'' and by 
" man " he did not mean the Jew only. Cyrus was 
a heathen, a worshipper of the sun, yet the later 
Isaiah not only speaks of him with profound 
respect, but even calls him "the Messiah" or 
" anointed " of the Lord. In the ^' Wisdom Litera- 
ture '' particularly there is a generous recognition 
of the endowments which God has bestowed upon 
various members of our race without distinction 
of nationality or creed. We still read with plea- 
sure on All Saints' Day the beautiful passage of 
Ecclesiasticus, '' Let us now praise famous men, and 
our fathers that begat us. The Lord hath wrought 
great glory by them through his power from the 
beginning. Such as did bear rule in their 
kingdoms . . • giving counsel by their under- 
standing and declaring prophecies . . . wise and 
eloquent in their instructions. Such as found 
out musical tunes and recited verses in writing, 



THE YEN. ARCHDEACON FAKRAR. 5 

rich men furnished with ability, living peaceably in 
their habitations." These eloquent teachers and 
great discoverers were not all of the Hebrew race. 

In the New Testament, as we should have ex- 
pected, this thought of the Fatherhood of God 
and brotherhood of men, and of the common heri- 
tage of the gifts of the Spirit, is still more clearly 
illustrated. Christ's type of love to our neighbour 
is the mongrel and despised Samaritan. He says 
of the heathen centurion, that He had not found so 
great faith, no, not in Israel. Though he was not 
sent but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, 
He extended His miraculous blessings even to the 
poor Syro-Phoenician woman. His last message to 
His Apostles was that they were to go into all the 
world and make disciples of every nation. 

Very early did they fulfil the mission. When 
Peter opened to the Gentiles the gates of the king- 
dom of Heaven, the Holy Spirit fell on the Eoman 
centurion and his household even before they had 
been baptized. Philip readily admitted into the 
Church the Ethiopian eunuch. The Christians who 
were scattered after the martyrdom of Stephen 
preached as freely to Greeks as to Jews. Paul and 
Barnabas devoted themselves mainly to the Apos- 
tolate of the Gentiles. 

And of all the Apostles, none admitted so fully 



6 ETHNIC INSPIRATION. 

as St. Paul the principle of Ethnic inspiration, and 
the free equal love of God to the heathen as to the 
Hebrews. His large heart seemed to delight in 
the prospect of a whole world equally guilty yet 
equally redeemed. The cosmopolitan sympathies, 
which may have been due in part to his early 
Tarsian education, burst into full blossom when 
they had been transplanted from the barren soil of 
Pharisaism. In his speech at Lystra he makes 
a direct appeal to the sense of God's presence as 
revealed by the beauty and fruitfulness of the 
natural world. The thought must have been 
familiar to him from the Book of Wisdom. There, 
though the heathen are blamed for worshipping 
'^ fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the 
stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven/' 
they are yet partially excused ^' because the things 
that are seen are beautiful." They are reminded 
that if their error arose while peradventure they 
were seeking God, and desirous to find Him, it 
would not have been beyond their capacity to infer 
proportionally from the greatness and beauty of 
the creatures, " how much mightier is He that 
made them." ''' So St. Paul tells the Lystrenians 
that they should turn from their imaginary gods 
" unto the living God, who made heaven, and earth, 

* Wisdom xiii. 1-9. 



THE YEN. ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 7 

and the sea, and all things that are therein ; who 
in times past suffered all nations to walk in their 
own ways. Nevertheless He left not Himself 
without witness, in that He did good, and gave 
rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our 
hearts with food and gladness.'^ 

With a skill and eloquence yet more remarkable 
did St. Paul make use of his accidental notice of 
an altar '^ to tbe unknown God " at Athens. He 
won the attention of the Athenians by telling 
them that he was but making known to them the 
God whom, without knowing it, they worshipped. 
In this speech occurs the noble passage which pre- 
sents us with his philosophy of history. God — 
so he tells the Athenian philosophers — had made 
all the nations of one, and determined their des- 
tinies and the bounds of their habitations expressly 
that they should seek God, if haply they might feel 
after Him and find Him, though He be not far 
from every one of us : '^ For in Him we live and 
move and have our being, as certain also of your 
own poets have said, ^ For we are also His offspring.'" 

Nor was this a mere passing thought with the 
great Apostle. In the elaborate argument with 
w^hich he opens his greatest epistle, he contends 
that it was fully within the power of the heathen 
to have recognised that which may be known of 



8 ETHNIC INSPIRATION. 

God, ^'for God manifested it unto them. For the 
invisible things of Him since the creation of the 
world are clearly seen, being perceived through the 
things that are made, even His everlasting power 
and divinity ; that they may be without excuse, 
because that knowing God, they glorified Him not 
as God, neither gave thanks." He also insists 
upon the truths of natural religion when he says 
that there were Gentiles who, not having the law, 
did hy nature the things contained in the law. 
Thus they were "a law unto themselves," and 
showed "the work of the law written in their hearts, 
their conscience also bearing witness, and their 
thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing 
one another." 

And while St. Paul thus shows his recognition of 
the elements of a natural religion by this broad and 
kindly view of God's dealings with the heathen 
world, he practically illustrates his belief by his 
obvious sympathy with their institutions and mode 
of life. The burning hatred of a Jew for every 
form of idolatry did not prevent him from look- 
ing with sympathy on the more innocent aspects 
of pagan life. He twice derives his metaphors 
from the theatre,* and frequently from the Greek 
games — the chariot-race, the boxing-match, the 
* I Cor. iv. 9; vii 31. 



THE VEN. ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 9 

runners and their prize garlands of parsley or of 
pine.* It is also known to all that he introduces 
at least three direct quotations from heathen poets 
into the sacred page. In Titus i. 1 2 he quotes a 
famous proverbial hexameter of Epimenides ; in 
I Cor. XV. 33 an iambic of Menander ; and in his 
speech on the Areopagus an hemistich which is 
found both in Kleanthes and Aratus. I have 
shown elsewhere that each of the three quotations 
was more or less proverbial ; f that each of them 
occurs in at least two poets ; and that taken alone 
they are wholly insuflScient to prove that the 
Apostle had anything but the most meagre ac- 
quaintance with Greek literature. They are the 
only quotations which he uses, unless the con- 
clusion of the speech at Lystra, which easily falls 
into an anapaestic rhythm, be also a quotation from 
some unknown lyric poet. But whether St. Paul 
had read much G-reek literature or not, it is 
interestmg to see that he does not shrink from 
adducing the thoughts and words of heathen 
writers not only in addressing idolaters, but even 
in solemn epistles to Christian men. 

And it may, I think, be fairly inferred from 

* I Cor. ix. 24 ; Phil. lii. 14 ; i Thess. ii 19 ; i Tim. vi 13 ; 
2 Tim. iv. 8. 
t Life of St. Paul^ i. 630-633. 

2 



10 ETHNIC INSPIRATION. 

these arguments and quotations that St. Paul 
would have been the last to deny that there was 
such a thing as Ethnic inspiration. Nor would St. 
James have denied it, though his whole tone of 
mind was more rigid and Judaic than that of his 
great contemporary. The hexametrical and iambic 
rhythms in his epistle may not prove much, and 
may even be due to a Greek amanuensis ; nor can 
we insist on the classic parallels which may be 
furnished for several passages in his epistle, nor 
on the curious expression '' the wheel of nature.'' * 
But St. James lays down, without any limitation, 
the great principle that every good gift {8o(n<;) 
and every perfect boon {Scoprj/uia) is from above, 
coming down from the Father of lights — '' with 
whom,'' he adds, apparently with a reference to 
the discoveries of astronomy, '' can be no variation, 
neither shadow that is cast by turning." 

In this principle of St. James we find the 
strongest recognition of the truth that there can 
be no power of the human intellect which is not 
bestowed by God. He must clearly, therefore, 
have believed that the wisdom, the eloquence, the 
piety of pagan writers was the result of an in- 
spiration from above. 

Nor is St. John less clear in his statement of the 

* James iii. 6, rbp Tpbxov T7l% yepiaews. 



THE VEN. AKCHDEACON FARRAR. 11 

truth that God has revealed Himself to, and has in- 
spired, men in all ages. He dwells on this thought 
in the golden prologue of his Gospel. The Eternal 
Word, he says, created all things. *^ In Him was 
life, and the life was the light of men.'^ He was 
manifested in historic presence ; He was yet more 
fully manifested by the outpouring of His Spirit; but 
He had been manifested by His works from the 
beginning of the creation, not only to separate in- 
dividuals, but to man, who, being made in the image 
of God, stood in a special relation to Him. '^ He 
saith not the light of the Jews only'' — such is the 
comment of-Theophylact — '^ hut of all men : " for all 
of us, so far as we have received intellect and 
reason from that Word which created us, are said 
to be illumined by Him. The light of the Divine 
Word has been shining continuously amid man's 
self-induced darkness, and deep as that darkness at 
times became, it never wholly overcame (^Kareka^ev) 
the heavenly light. Amid many false lights there 
was always the true light, which in Nature and life 
and conscience is ever coming into the world, and 
which leaves no single man wholly destitute of a 
Divine illumination.* In this profound passage 
St. John does but clearly express and illustrate 
what had been implied so long before in the rap- 
* John i 4, 5 9, and Canon Westcott's Commentary. 



12 ETHNIC INSPIRATION. 

turous exclamation of David, "How excellent is 
Thy loving-kindness, God ! therefore the children 
of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy 
wings. . . . For with Thee is the fountain of life ; 
in Thy light do we see light/' '"' 

We are prepared, then, to see the light of God 
shining even on the heathen. In the sacred books of 
the East there are many lovely and holy thoughts, 
many flashes of subtle insight, many trains of pro- 
found speculation. The classic writers of Greece 
and Rome have enriched the thoughts of the world 
with a literature that has never been surpassed. 
The attitude of Christians towards this literature 
has often been singularly narrow and mistaken. 
They have condemned the study of it as involving 
a waste of time and a diminution of spirituality. 
They have failed to see that exquisite thoughts 
conveyed in perfect language could hardly have 
been due to an inspiration of the devil. The 
Emperor Julian showed deeper insight when he 
saw that Christian teachers gained greatly from 
the study of pagan literature, and therefore forbad 
'^the Galileans'' to avail themselves of this source 
of culture. He was well aware that among the 
opponents of the pagan reaction, at the head of 
which he placed himself, none were so much to be 

* Psalm xxxvi. 7-9. 



THE VEN. ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 13 

dreaded as the great Cappadocian scholars, Basil 
the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus, who had been 
fellow-students with himself in the schools of 
Athens. It is true that the ascetic spirit was in- 
clined to disparage the study of pagan writers as 
a w^aste of time. Jerome in his early years had 
been an ardent student of classical literature, but 
his conscience was rendered uneasy by a dream, in 
w^hich he was suddenly taken before the judgment- 
seat of God, and there fell on his face in terror. 
Asked who he was, he replied, ^' I am a Christian.'' 
*^ Thou liest,'' was the answer ; ^^ thou art a Cicero- 
nian, not a Christian ; for where your treasure is, 
there also is your heart." He was then scourged, 
and in his agony cried out that he would never 
again offend by heathen studies. The frequency of 
the classical allusions in later writings makes it 
tolerably certain, however, that he could not 
entirely have abandoned the favourite reading of 
his earlier days. Indeed, when taunted by Kufious 
with having broken his vow, he falls back upon the 
plea that after all that vow was only taken in a 
dream. As time went on, the jealousy felt by 
Christian writers tow^ards grammatic studies be- 
came deeper and stronger. Gregory the Great — 
in terms which at once recall those which Shake- 
speare puts into the mouth of Jack Cade — severely 



14 ETHNIC INSPIRATION. 

reproved Didier, Arclibisliop of Vienne, for trying 
to reintroduce the teaching of grammar. But the 
entire abandonment of classical studies synchro- 
nised with the period in which mankind fell into 
the deepest ignorance and subjection. The Revival 
of Letters led to the revival of a purer Christianity. 
The Humanists were the immediate precursors of 
the Reformers. ^^ Greece rose from the dead with 
the New Testament in her hand." 

And if some great Christian teachers — especially 
among the later and Western Fathers — were in- 
clined to disparage the entire life and thought and 
literature of the heathen world, we must not forget 
that the great Greek Fathers showed a wiser libe- 
rality. Justin Martyr, who had himself entered 
Christianity through the portals of Philosophy, 
held that all who lived conformably to truth 
were Christians, even if they were regarded as 
atheists. Among them he mentions Socrates and 
Heraclitus. He even goes so far as to say that 
Socrates had known Christ, though only in part, 
since Christ is the Divine Reason, of whom every 
race of men partakes.* He also, like other 
Fathers, attributes inspiration to '' The Sibyl " and 
"Hystaspes," and freely quotes from them. Clement 
of Alexandria is still more cosmopolitan in his theo- 

* Just. Mart. A'j^oLy i. 46, ii. 10, 



THE VEN. ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 15 

logy. He had anticipated Lessing by many cen- 
turies in his conception of the education of the 
human race by a Divine Instructor. He does 
not give any definition of ^^ Inspiration " — indeed 
no Christian Father has done so, nor has any defi- 
nition ev^r been accepted by the Universal Church 
— but it appears from almost every page of his 
writings that he drew no distinction in kind be- 
tween the inspiration of the sacred writers and that 
which he believed to have been imparted to the 
greatest of the Greek philosophers. In these views 
he was heartily followed by Origen and others of 
the Greek fathers, who believed in the reality of 
Ethnic inspiration, if by that phrase we mean to 
imply that some of the greatest and wisest of the 
heathen not only groped after God, but really found 
Him, — that they were sincere in their prayers for 
a Divine illumination, and that those prayers were 
not left unheard. 

The study of classical literature has long occupied 
a large part of the education of Christian youth. 
It needs, of course, to be faithfully handled and 
wisely supplemented, but in the hands of truly 
Christian teachers it may become a distinct help 
to religious training. Let us not forget that the 
study of the Hortensius of Cicero was one of the 
first strong influences which stirred the heart of 



16 ETHNIC INSPIRATION. 

St. Augustine to nobler aspirations. In Plato, in 
Seneca, in Epietetus, in Marcus Aurelius, we may 
often find the " testimonium animse naturaliter 
Christians," How can we better express the 
reality and blessing of Ethnic inspiration than in 
the sweet verses of the Christian Year .^-^ 

" And now another Canaan yields 

To Thine all-conquering Ark ; 
Fly from the * old poetic ' fields, 

Ye Paynim shadows dark ! 
Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays, 
Lo ! here the * unknown God ' of thy unconscious praise. 

" The olive- wreath, the ivied wand, 

'Tiie sword in myrtles drest,' 
Each legend of the shadowy strand. 

Now wakes a vision hlest ; 
As little children lisp, and tell of heaven, 
So thoughts beyond their thought to those high hards were given J' 



ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 



11. 



By the Eev. GEOEGE RAWLINSON, M.A., Canon of 

Canterbury Cathedral. 

^HE religious system of the ancient Egyptians, 
as we see it in the palmy days of Amenhotep 
IL and Thothmes III., or again in those of Seti I. 
and Eameses IL, was, externally at any rate, a 
polytheism of a multitudinous and complicated 
character. In all the temples we see the kings wor- 
shipping a long string of gods and goddesses, each 
distinguished by a special name, a special form, 
and generally by special emblems. In the religious 
books, as the '^ Eitual of the Dead " and the " Book 
of Hades," there is the same multiplicity of deities, 
and the same apparent distinctness of each deity 
from all the rest. The myths present us with 
groups of gods, acting as a society or as a family, 
standing in diverse relations one towards another, 
each with his own personality, speaking to each 
other, giving or executing orders, oiBfering counsel, 



18 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

sometimes quarrelling, or even fighting. The well- 
known Osirid myth associates together a group of 
seven divine personages: — Seb, Nut or Nutpe, 
Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus, who play 
their several parts in the strange and weird drama. 
In the myth of the "Destruction of Mankind" 
there is another group of seven or eight : — Nun, Ea, 
Shu, Seb, Nut, Thoth, Tefnut, and (if she is distinct 
from Tefnut) Athor. When the Greeks began their 
attempts to systematise the Egyptian polytheism, 
they distinguished eight gods of the first rank, 
twelve of the second, and an indefinite number of 
the third. Moderns, who attempt to enumerate 
the " principal Egyptian deities," make them sixty- 
three or seventy-three, or some other large num- 
ber. The Egyptians themselves spoke of "the 
iliousand gods, the gods male, the gods female, 
those which are of the land of Egypt,'' and in this 
expression were probably far from intending to lay 
down a fixed limit. 

When we examine, by the light of the ancient 
remains, the question whether this multiplicity of 
gods was an original element of the Egyptian 
religion or the result of growth and development, 
we seem to find reason for deciding in favour of the 
latter view. As we trace the religion backwards 
towards its source, the pantheon diminishes. Such 



THE REV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A. 19 

deities as Anta or Anaitis, Bar or Baal, Astaret or 
Ashtoreth, Eeshpu or Reseph, and Ken or Kiun, 
were unknown in Egypt until the Semitic influx, 
which began about the twelfth dynasty. Ammon 
himself received no acknowledgment until the rise 
of Thebes to power a little earlier, neither did his 
contemplar deities, Maut and Khonsu. On an 
altar dedicated by Pepi, the third king of the sixth 
dynasty, which seems to be intended as a com- 
memoration of all the gods, the number of the 
names does not exceed forty. Among these are 
such abstractions as '' Seeing," '' Hearing," ^^ Year," 
^^Age," ^'Eternity," ^^Life," ^^Stability," ^^Triumph," 
"Justification," which can scarcely have been re- 
garded as real deities. If we deduct these, and 
some other equally doubtful entries, we may say 
that Pepi appears to have acknowledged about 
twenty-five deities. Following the stream of his- 
tory somewhat farther up, we come to the pyramid 
period, for which the records are ample. These set 
before us as the objects of worship at the time about 
eighteen gods and goddesses : — Ea, Phthah, Khem, 
Kneph, Thoth, Neith, Seb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set, 
Horus, Anubis, Athor, Sokari, Ma, Saf, and Heka. 
Finally, in the pre-pyramid period we find but nine 
gods recognised : — Ea, Phthah, Osiris, Isis, Horus, 
Set, Anubis, Athor, and Sokari. These nine are per- 



20 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

haps reducible to seven, for the identity of Isis with 
Athor, and of Phthah with Sokari, is probable. 

Thus Egyptian polytheism is seen to have been 
a gradual growth, and the question naturally arises, 
whether, if we could trace the stream a little farther 
back, a little nearer to its source, we should not 
find the multiplicity altogether disappear, and the 
polytheism shrink up into monotheism. As in 
Semitic theology El and Eliun, and Baal, and 
Marnas, and Adonai, and Moloch, and Eam or 
Eimmon, and Shaddai are originally only so many 
names for the one Supreme God, though later they 
became separate and grew into distinct personages, 
so it may be at any rate suspected that, in the 
Egyptian religion, the polytheism was to a large 
extent owing to the tyranny of language, the 
numerous nomina of the one God becoming by 
degrees distinct numina. One special cause of this 
in Egypt was the original separation and isolation 
of the different parts of the country, in which each 
nome was at first a distinct state with its own ruler, 
its own capital, its own worship, and its own name 
for the great object of worship, the god of its own 
temple. Ea was originally the one god of On 
(Heliopolis), Phthah of Memphis, Neith of Sais, Bast 
or Pasht of Bubastis, Sabak of Crocodilopolis, Osiris 
of Abydos, Mentu of Hermonthis, Ammon of Thebes, 



THE REV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A. 21 

Kneph or Num of Elephantine, Atlior of Denderah. 
As Egypt became united, as the nomes were merged 
into kingdoms, the god-names obtained a wider 
acceptance, and so the pantheon grew. The kings, 
whose object it was to parade the wide extent of 
their dominion, gladly exhibited in their temple 
bas reliefs, and in their tombs the long trains of 
local gods and goddesses, which showed that all 
the nomes were subject to their power ; the priests, 
with a deeper mystic meaning, gladly employed 
the multitude of epithets at once to set forth the 
Divine nature and perfections, and to surround the 
higher truths of religion with a mysteriousness that 
should not be penetrable by the uninitiated. 

We may trace three phases in the early Egyptian 
religion. First, there is a time when all worship is 
local — when at Memphis, and Sais, and Heliopolis, 
and Bubastis, and Pisebek, and Sesennu, and Aby- 
dos, and This, and Thebes, and Silsilis, and Ele- 
phantine, isolated worships, similar in general 
character, but differing in their symbolism and in 
the name under which they speak of the Supreme 
Being, prevail. Then follows a time in which sun- 
worship becomes general, not superseding the local 
cults, but being superadded to them. The Osirid 
myth is formed, and there comes to be throughout 
Egypt a recognition of the gods of the Osirid circle : 



22 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

— Seb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Set, Horus, in 
addition to the earlier local belief and cult, what- 
ever it was. Finally, by the joint efforts of the 
kings and of the priests, an amalgamation is made 
of all the various local cults and names, a vast 
pantheon is created, which continually tends to 
grow, multiplicity is desired as implying richness, 
abstractions are made into deities, a special god is 
placed over each of the elements, over the seasons, 
and over every operation of Nature that can be 
conceived of as separate and distinct. 

But the primitive monotheism, which this poli- 
tico-hierarchic system concealed and overlaid, was 
never wholly suppressed. In the time of the 
fifth dynasty, long after the introduction of the 
Osirid circle of gods, we find simple monotheism 
expressed in the ^' Maxims of Ptah-hotep,'' with an 
artlessness and unconsciousness that clearly indi- 
cate a mind on which polytheism has taken no 
hold, which may have accepted it as a mode of 
representing deity to the vulgar mass, but has 
allowed it no place in the inward convictions of the 
religious consciousness. '' Obedience,'' says Ptah- 
hotep, ''is of God ; disobedience is hateful to God;" 
and again, '' Good for a man is the discipline of 
his father, of him from whom he has derived his 
being. It is a great satisfaction to obey his words ; 



THE REV. CANON EAWLINSON, M.A. 23 

for a good son is the gift of God ; " and further, 
*' If thou art known for thy wealth, and hast be- 
come a great lord, let not thy heart grow proud 
because of thy riches ; for it is God who has given 
them unto thee." Later on, there is that curious 
mixture of monotheism with polytheism which has 
been called henotheism, a phase of religion under 
which the god who for the time is present to the 
w^orshipper s thought occupies and engrosses it so 
entirely as to become, as it were, the only god, and 
to be addressed with all the epithets suitable to the 
purest monotheism. Thus in one hymn Amnion 
is called ^' the Ancient of Heaven " (cf Dan. vii. 
9), ^^ the Oldest of the Earth, Lord of all Existences, 
the Support of all Things, the One in his Works, 
Single among the Gods, Lord of Truth, Maker of 
Men, Creator of Things below and above, En- 
lightener of the Earth, Lord of Eternity, Maker 
Everlasting, Lord of Adoration and of Life, the 
One Maker of Existences.'' In another, Osiris is 
" the Eldest, the King of the Gods, the Feeder of 
Beings, the Euler of the two Worlds, the Beneficent 
Spirit, Great in Dignity, Permanent in Empire." 
In a third, even so local and inconsiderable a deity 
as Hapi, the Nile-god, elsewhere spoken of as 
created by Osiris, becomes to his worshipper the 
sole representation of deity, and is addressed as 



24 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

''Bringer of Food, Great Lord of Provisions, 
Creator of all Good Things, Lord of Terrors and of 
Choicest Joys, Giver of Life to all." It is said of 
him that ''he is not graven in marble; he is not 
beheld ; he is not adored in sanctuaries ; his abode 
is not known ; no shrine is found of his with 
painted figures ; there is no building that can 
contain him ; he hath no counsellor ; " and again, 
'' Unknown is his name in heaven ; he doth not 
manifest his forms ; vain are all representations." 

The educated classes among the Egyptians went 
beyond henotheism. As Wilkinson long ago ob- 
served — '' The priests who were initiated into, and 
who understood the mysteries of their religion, 
believed in one Deity alone, and in performing 
their adorations to any particular member of the 
pantheon, addressed themselves directly to the sole 
Euler of the universe through that particular form. 
Each form (whether called Ptah, Amon, or any 
other of the figures representing various characters 
of the Deity) was one of His attributes ; in the 
same manner as our expressions, 'the Creator,' 
'the Omniscient,' 'the Almighty,' or any other 
title, indicate one and the same being." Similarly 
Lenormant : — " Au fond de la religion de ceux qui 
avaient approfondi la science religieuse se retrouvait 
la grande idee de Tunite de Dieu." The manifold 



THE REV. CANON EAWLINSON, M.A. 25 

gods of the popular mythology were understood by 
the educated to be either personified attributes of 
the Deity, or parts of the nature which He had 
created, considered as informed and inspired by 
Him. Num or Kneph represented the creative 
mind ; Phthah, the creative hand, or act of creat- 
ing; Maut represented matter; Ea, the sun; Khonsu, 
the moon; Seb, the earth; Khem, the generative 
power in Nature ; Nut, the upper hemisphere of 
heaven ; Athor, the lower world or under hemi- 
sphere; Thoth personified the Divine wisdom; 
Ammon, perhaps the Divine mysteriousness or in- 
comprehensibility ; Osiris (according to some), the 
Divine goodness. When an educated Egyptian 
worshipped Khem, or Kneph, or Ea, or Maut, or 
Osiris, or Thoth, or Ammon, he understood that he 
was worshipping the one God under some one of 
His forms, or in some one of His aspects. In this 
sense it is quite true to say, as Mr. Goodwin does, 
that ''the recognition of one sole Creator and 
Governor of the earth and all its inhabitants was 
quite familiar to the Egyptians." 

So far, then, as the primary truth of religion — 
the unity of God — is concerned, the relation borne 
by the Egyptian system or systems to Biblical 
theology is this — While the Bible proclaims, clearly 
and unmistakably, with a voice like that of a 



26 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

trumpet, the great fact that there is one and one 
only God, the Maker and Governor of the universe, 
the sole proper object of worship to men and angels, 
in ancient Egypt this truth was secretly inculcated 
by the priests, formed a part of the esoteric religion, 
was known to the initiated, while to the great mass 
of the people it was so veiled and overshadowed by 
a multitudinous polytheism, everywhere meeting 
the eye and the ear, as practically to be unknown, 
unrecognised, not even conceived of The obscura- 
tion of the truth was brought about gradually. A 
primitive monotheism, derived from the primeval 
revelation made to mankind, was by degrees over- 
laid and hidden under a cloud of invented deities, 
originally attributes or manifestations of the one 
Supreme Being, but rapidly tending to detach 
themselves, and to become separate personalities. 
" L'idee de Dieu," as Lenormant says, " se confon- 
dit pen a pen avec les manifestations de sa puis- 
sance, ses attributs et ses qualites furent personifies 
une foule cVagents secondaires, distribues dans un 
ordre hierarchique, concourant a Torganisation 
generale du monde, et a la conservation des etres. 
C'est ainsi que se forme ce polytheisme qui, dans 
la variete et la bizarrerie de ses symboles, finit par 
embrasser la nature entiere." 

If we compare the Egyptian idea of the nature 



THE REV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A. 27 

and attributes of the one God with that which is 
set before us in the theology of the Bible, we shall 
probably at first sight be surprised at the amount 
of resemblance. The Supreme God of the Egyp- 
tians is an Eternal Spirit, ^' the sole Producer of all 
things both in heaven and earth, Kimself not pro- 
duced of any/' ''the only true living God, self- 
originated/' '' who exists from the beginning/' 
"who has made all things, but has not Himself 
been made." He is called '' the Creator of Exis- 
tences," '' the Support of all Things," " the Lord of 
Eternity, of Life, of Wisdom ; " and again, '' the 
Lord of Terror," '' He w^hose eye subdues the 
wricked." An inscrutable mystery attaches to Him. 
" His abode is not known ; " '' there is no building 
that can contain Him " (cf. i Kings viii. 2 7 ; Tsa. 
Ixvi. i); ''His name is hidden" — "unknown" 
even " in heaven ; " His form is inconceivable — 
*^ He does not manifest it ; " " vain are all represen- 
tations." And He is omniscient. He is " the Lord 
of Wisdom whose precepts are wise " — " no one 
has ever been His counsellor" (cf. Isa. xl. 12-14); 
"He lies awake when all men sleep" (ih. 28); 
" He sees " and " knows all things." His mora] 
character is in many respects beautifully drawn by 
the religious poets. He is "the Good God" — 
"beneficent in will and word;" "the Giver of all 



28 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

Good Things " (cf. James i. 17); ^^ the Lord of 
Mercy, most loving;'' 'Hhe Hearer of Prayer" — 
" He fulfils the desires of them who cry to Him " 
(cf Psalm cxlv. 19); ''He listens to the poor in 
distress, and is gentle of heart when one cries to 
Him" (cf. 2 Cor. x. i); "He giveth help ;" He is 
^' a Strong Defender " — " no help comes from any 
one except from Him;" "vainly do men trust to 
princes in their troubles " (cf. Psalm cxviii. 8, 9 ; 
cxlvi. 3). At the same time that He is so merci- 
ful, He is "the Lord of Truth;" "the Doer of 
Justice ; " " He who maintains justice in the two 
worlds ; " " He who overthrows and consumes His 
enemies." The only marked deficiency in the 
moral character of the Supreme God of the Egyp- 
tians which strikes the student of Egyptian 
texts, is the want of any insistence on His abso- 
lute purity and holiness, and a consequent toning 
down of that extreme awfulness which in the 
Biblical theology attaches to the Almighty. We 
miss parallel expressions to that of Isaiah (chap. 
Ivii. 15) — "Thus saith the high and lofty One 
that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy ; 
I dwell in the high and holy place ; " or that of 
Habakkuk (chap. i. 13) — "Thou art of purer 
eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look 
on iniquity;" or that of Bildad the Shuhite — 



THE REV. CANON KAWLINSON, M.A. 29 

" The stars are not pure in Thy sight ; " and again 
we miss parallel statements to those of the author 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews — '' It is a fearful 
thinp; to fall into the hands of the livino; God'' 
(chap. X. 31), and, ^^ our God is a consuming fire" 
(chap. xii. 29). 

We must further note that the religious eleva- 
tion, whereof we have given specimens, is never 
long sustained in the Egyptian texts. There is 
nothing in any of the Sacred Books that can compare 
with the lofty jflights of Isaiah or the magnificent 
descriptions of Job, or even with the deep devotion 
and s[>iritual elevation of the Psalms. Passing from 
Scripture to the Egyptian texts, we breathe a 
different atmosphere, we descend to a lower level. 
In the same hymn in which Amen, representing 
the Supreme God, has all the highest titles of 
divinity showered upon him, he is also given 
epithets which startle and shock the devout mind ; 
e.g., he is '"'the beautiful bull," ''the bull of his 
mother in his field," ''the good being begotten of 
Phthah;'' "the gods love his fragi^ance when he 
comes from Arabia ; " he is " a beautiful youth ; " 
he has " strong, beautiful horns ; " he " proceeds 
from tlie firmament/' and is described unmistakably 
as the actual sun which rises and traverses the 
heavens and sets. He " rises in the eastern hori- 



30 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

zon, and sets in the western ; " lie " dawns on his 
children daily ; '' he is ^' lord of the boat and of the 
barge that conduct him through the firmament in 
peace;" he "sails in the heaven in tranquillity." 
Much as we would desire to give these expres- 
sions a mystic or symbolic meaning, they seem 
incapable of it ; they constrain us to see in the 
great Amen nothing after all but a sun-god, an 
intelligence seated in the solar orb, circling round 
the earth day after day ; a slave chained to the 
oar, with an existence which is one long monotony. 
How different from this is the Biblical conception 
of the Great Spirit, of whom heaven and earth, the 
sun and moon and stars, are mere creatures, set to 
perform their several tasks, " servants of His, that 
do His pleasure " ! 

Again, it cannot reasonably be denied that the 
Egyptian religion must have grievously lowered 
and debased the conception of the Divine nature in 
the minds of those who accepted it by its animal 
worship. It is an unworthy attempt on the part 
of a learned Egyptologist to throw dust in the eyes 
of the unlearned and ignorant, to assure them, 
as Mr. Goodwin does, that "probably the well- 
instructed Egyptians no more worshipped as gods 
crocodiles, ibises, and cats, than the Dutch do 
storks, or than w^e do the animals in the Zoological 



THE KEY. CAKON EAWLINSON, M.A. 31 

Gardens/' The Dutch do not put men to death for 
killing storks, as the Egyptians did those who 
killed hawks, or cats, or ibises. They would not, 
in case of a fire in one of their cities, leave the 
flames to spread as chance might direct, and con- 
centrate all their attention and their efforts on 
preventing the storks from singeing their wings, 
as Herodotus tells us the Egyptians concentrated 
theirs on saving the cats. We keep our foreign 
animals in the Zoological Gardens as curiosities, 
that we may see what they are like. We do 
not lodge them in magnificent abodes, or have 
them attended by trains of priests, or lead them in 
procession through the streets for people to fall 
down before them and worship them, or proclaim 
a public festival when a new one makes his 
appearance in our midst, or go, one and all of us, 
into mourning on their decease, or spend twenty 
or thirty thousand pounds upon their funerals, as 
the Egyptians did with their Apis and Mnevis 
bulls at Memphis and Heliopolis. The fact is, 
that, according to all the ancient authorities, and 
according to the Egyptian remains themselves, the 
Apis and Mnevis bulls at Memphis and Heliopolis, 
and other sacred animals elsewhere, held the actual 
position of gods in Egypt, were called gods, were 
actually worshipped, had their own priests and 



32 ANCIiiNT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

temples, and were viewed as incarnations of deity. 
The ordinary inscription on the tomb of an Apis 
bull runs as follows : — '' The — th year, the — th of 
the month — , under the sanctity of the Horus who 
makes strong the heart, the King of Upper and 
Lower Egypt, the Lord of the Northern and 
Southern regions, the Lord of Strength, the Euler 
of the two Worlds, the Horus of gold, the Sun who 

rejoices the heart, the son of the Sun, (name 

of king), beloved of Api-Osiris, the god was em- 
barked to unite himself with the good Amenti, and 
was given his reunion and his seat in the Kherneter, 
on the side of the west, at Phthah-Ka. The mani- 
festation of the sanctity of the God towards heaven 
took place in the — th year, the — th of the month — ; 
his birth took place in the — th year, on the — th 
of the month — , under the sanctity of the Horus 
who glorifies the heart, the Sun, the son of the Sun, 
(name of king), living for ever. His instal- 
lation in the temple of Phthah took place in the 
— th year, on the — th of the month — , under the 
sanctity of the Horus who benefits the heart, the 
Sun who bestows goodness upon the heart, the son 

of the Sun, (name of king). The happy 

duration of this god was — years, — months, and — 
days. The good god, (name of king), ar- 
ranged for the august god all the grave-clothes 



THE REV. CANON RAWLIiNSON; M.A. 33 

and other worked things, and all the ceremonies. 
This he did that he might obtain the gift of an 
eternal and powerful existence.'' It will be seen 
that the Apis bull is called a god four times over in 
his epitaph. 

No doubt the bulk of the sacred animals were of 
less account, and were rather reverenced than wor- 
shipped. Still it was a religious feeling to which 
they appealed, not a sentiment of kindness merely, 
far less a feeling of curiosity. They were consi- 
dered in a certain sense Divine, and the regard in 
which they were held could not but have absorbed 
an appreciable portion of the religious sentiment 
of the nation. Still it did, comparatively speak- 
ing, little harm. The animal-worship which was 
debasing and degrading, which lowered men's con- 
ceptions of the Divine nature, and was justly ridi- 
culed by the Greeks, the Persians, and the Eomans, 
was that of the Apis and Mnevis bulls, and of the 
other animals supposed to be gods incarnate. ; 

The Egyptian animal-w^orship is thought by some 
to be a remnant of '' totemism," a partial survival 
from the time when the nation consisted of a set 
of tribes, each of which regarded itself as descended 
from some animal or other. But this theory in no 
way rises above the dignity of an improbable con- 
jecture. It was not their ancestors w^hom the 



34 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

Egyptians connected with animal forms, but their 
gods ; and from the gods they held that no human 
being was really descended (Herod, ii. 143). The 
true origin of the worship of animals in Egypt is 
probably to be found in that exaggerated symbolism 
which is characteristic of the Egyptian religion. 
Some resemblance, real or fancied, was traced, or 
thought to be traced, between the idiosyncrasy of 
some animal and the peculiar features of some god. 
Forthwith the animal became the symbol of the 
god, as the wise ibis of Thoth, the far-seeing hawk 
of Ea, the watchful dog of Anubis, the cow of 
bounteous Athor, the crocodile of awful Sabak, the 
hippopotamus of Taourt, the lion of Pasht or 
Sekhet. After this the deities were themselves 
represented in the form or with the head of the 
animal thus associated with them. Finally, the 
animals themselves, through this association, became 
sacred. 

Biblical theology, it is evident, bears no relation 
at all to this element of the Egyptian religion, 
which is an excrescence or accretion, the result of 
human thought and fancy exercising itself in the 
domain of religion with too much freedom, and too 
little sense of the necessity of self-restraint. 



ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS— \ 

{Continued), 



III. 



By the Eev. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A., Canon of 
Canterbury Cathedral. 

H'^HE religious system of the ancient Eg3^ptians 
is differentiated from all other non-Christian 
systems most pointedly in the stress that it laid 
upon the after life, and the detail into which it 
entered with respect to the conditions, trials, cir- 
cumstances, and ultimate fate of the dead. It was 
the universal belief in Egypt, from a date long 
anterior to Abraham, that immediately after death 
the soul descended into the lower world (Amenti), 
and was conducted into the Hall of Truth, or '' of the 
Two Truths," where it was judged in the presence 
of Osiris, and of his forty-two assessors, the '^ Lords 
of Truth '' and judges of the dead. Anubis ( Anepu), 
the " Director of the Weight," son of Osiris and 
Nephthys, brought forth a pair of scales, and, after 
placing in one of the scales a figure or emblem of 
Ma (Truth), set in the other a vase containing the 



36 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

good deeds of the deceased, Thoth — the Divine 
Wisdom — standing by the while with a tablet in 
his hand, whereon to record the result. If the 
good deeds preponderated, if they weighed down 
the scale wherein they were placed, then the happy 
soul was permitted to enter " the boat of the sun,'' 
and was conducted by good spirits to the Elysian 
fields (Aahlu), to the '' Pools of Peace " and the 
dwelling-places of the blest. If, on the contrary, 
the good deeds were insufficient, if the scale con- 
taining them remained suspended in the air, then 
the unhappy soul was sentenced, according to the 
degree of its ill-desert, to begin a round of trans- 
migrations in the bodies of more or less unclean 
animals ; the number, nature, and duration of the 
transmigrations depending on the degree of the 
deceased's demerits, and the consecpent length and 
severity of the punishment which he deserved or 
the purification w^hich he needed. Ultimately, if 
after many trials sufficient purity was not attained, 
the wicked soul, which had proved itself incurable, 
underwent a final sentence at the hands of Osiris, 
Judcre of the Dead, and being; condemned to com- 
plete and absolute annihilation, was destroyed upon 
the steps of heaven by Shu, the Lord of Light. 
The good soul, having made a long peregrination 
through the infernal regions, encountering many 



THE REV. CANON EAWLINSON, M.A. 37 

dangers, and having then been freed from its 
infirmities by passing through the basin of purga- 
torial fire, guarded by the four ape-faced genii, 
was made the companion of Osiris for a period of 
three thousand years, after which it returned from 
Amenti, re-entered its former body, rose from the 
dead, and lived once more a human life on earth. 
This process was gone through again and again, 
until a certain mystic cycle of years became com- 
plete, when, to crown all, the good and blessed 
attained the final joy of union with God, being 
absorbed into the Divine essence from which they 
had once emanated, and so attaining the full per- 
fection and true end of their existence. 

A later form of the belief regarded each justified 
soul as in some sense absorbed into Osiris imme- 
diately upon its justification, and hence the name 
of Osiris was freely bestowed on each such soul. 
Individuality was not, however, wholly lost. The 
justified soul still bears its own earthly name, 
together with that of Osiris, and is conceived of 
as standing in a certain relation to its mummified 
body, which it occasionally revisits, and in the 
off'erings made to which it participates. The clear- 
ness, definiteness, and precision of the Egyptian 
belief in respect of the future state is certainly in 
striking contrast to the dimness and inclefiniteness 



38 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

in whidi the subject is left by the Biblical writers, 
especially those of the more early times. Mosaism 
pointedly avoided the entire subject of a future life, 
concentrating itself upon the duties of this life, and 
setting before men temporal rewards and punish- 
ments, with the object of keeping them within the 
line of their duties. As Moses cannot but have 
been thoroughly conversant with the Egyptian 
views with respect to a future existence and a 
judgment of all men after death according to their 
works, it is impossible to doubt that his reticence 
was intentional, premeditated, perhaps commanded. 
The fact was, that the Egyptian system, whatever 
amount of truth it contained — and we are far from 
denying that the amount was considerable — rested 
on no sound basis, was a fabric built up by fancy 
out of very questionable materials, and involved 
much false teaching of a practically dangerous 
character, against which Moses had to guard his 
countrymen. 

I. The doctrine of absorption into the Divine 
essence, whether at death or ultimately, was a pan- 
theistic conception, which involved logically the 
whole degrading theory of Pantheism. If the 
human spirit was to become at some future time a 
part of the Divine essence, then it must have been 
derived from that essence, not in the way of crea- 



THE REV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A. 39 

tion, but of emanation, and so must be really, 
during the whole period of its seemingly separate 
existence, a part of God. This doctrine leads to 
the most intolerable spiritual pride, the most ruin- 
ous self-conceit, the putting away of self-control as 
unnecessary, and belief in the indifferency of actions. 
If in Egypt it did not have these worst results, we 
must account for it by the fact that the Egyp- 
tian teaching on the subject was not uniform nor 
consistent; the defunct Egyptian of the time of 
Moses was at once Osiris, and not altogether 
Osiris ; he '' dwelt in the eternal seat " — he was the 
*^ triumphant one " — he had '^ splendour in heaven 
and power on earth ;" yet he ''went in and came 
out from his tomb; "he enjoyed the sepulchral 
meals that were offered to him by his relatives ; he 
liked to feel the north wind blowing on him, and 
he refreshed himself beneath the branches of the 
trees wdiich he had planted. As for the final ab- 
sorption into God at the end of the mystic cycle 
of years, it was too remote an event to occupy the 
minds of living men, and probably only a few 
philosophers among the priests ever thought out 
its logical consequences. 

II. The features of the future life, as set before 
the mass of the Eg5rptians by the priests, were not 
of such a character as to attract the approval of 



40 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

a divinely-inspired teacher like Moses. The has, 
or spirits of the dead, were represented as '' wan- 
dering over the earth, going to the tomb, visit- 
ing those who belonged to them, enjoying the 
offerings of their relations, and then disappear- 
ing to the body in the grave." Even in the 
'' Fields of Peace," where they dwelt in Amenti, 
they prayed that some ^' might come to them with 
jngs of heer and cakes, the cakes of the lords of 
eternity,'' and hoped to '' receive slices from the 
joint upon the table of the great god J' The most 
spiritual of their enjoyments were '' the breathing 
of the delightful breezes of the north wind, the eat- 
ing of bread, the gathering of flowers, and the re- 
ceiving of food in felicity from the produce of the 
Sekhet Aahlu." 

III. The Egyptian ^^justification" was not of 
such a nature that a Divine legislator could give it 
his sanction. An Egyptian, at the judgment, was 
supposed to appear before the assessors of Osiris, 
and to deny wholly that he had ever committed 
any of the forty-two sins of the Egyptian sacred 
code. ^^I have not blasphemed," he had to say; 
'^ I have not deceived ; I have not stolen ; I have 
not slain any one treacherously ; I have not been 
cruel to any one ; I have not caused disturbance ; 
I have not been idle ; I have not been drunken ; I 



THE REV. CANON KAWLINSON, M.A. 41 

have not issued unjust orders ; I have not been 
indiscreetly curious ; I have not multiplied words 
in speaking ; I have struck no one ; I have caused 
fear to no one ; I have slandered no one ; I have 
not eaten my heart through envy ; I have not re- 
viled the face of the king nor the face of m}^ father; 
I have not made false accusations ; I have not kept 
milk from the mouth of sucklings ; I have not 
caused abortion ; I have not ill-used my slaves ; I 
have not killed sacred beasts ; I have not defiled 
the river ; I have not polluted myself carnally ; I 
have not taken the clothes of the dead/' &c. He 
was to protest perfect sinlessness : " My mouth and 
my hands are pure/' he was to say. As he quitted 
the Hall of the Two Truths, he was to repeat five 
times over the words, '' I am pure/' Thus he was 
to be justified by his own merits. He was not to 
throw himself on the Divine mercy, and confess 
himself '' Unclean, unclean ; " on the contrary, he 
was to claim that his actions had deserved an 
eternal rew^ard. 

IV. The original doctrine of retribution, of 
rewards and punishments distributed after death 
according to desert, was early corrupted and over- 
laid in the Egyptian system by an elaborate 
^'Eitual of the Dead," which substituted, as the 
means of salvation, for inherent righteousness, a 



42 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

knowledge of certain elaborate prayers and set 
incantations, by the help of which alone could 
justified souls secure their passage from the Hall 
of the Two Truths, where they had been judged, 
to the ''Pools of Peace/' the blessed fields of 
Aahlu. Numerous and terrible perils lay in the 
way. Here crocodiles and lions, there vipers and 
serpents of huge size, in places monsters of inde- 
scribable form and of extreme ferocity, barred the 
way to the soul's farther progress, and had to be 
propitiated before they would allow the soul to 
pass onward. The propitiation was by means of 
charms or of set forms of prayer, which must be 
recited by the soul arrested on its course, each at 
the proper time and in the proper place. With a 
view to help the memory, if it failed, the most 
important passages of the ritual were inscribed in 
the inner part of the cofiin wherein the mummy 
lay, or on the bandages wherewith it was swathed 
from head to foot, or upon the inner walls of the 
tomb. Sometimes even a complete copy of the 
book was buried with the corpse, in order that the 
ha, or soul, might refer to it for the proper prayer, 
charm, or invocation, whereby alone could the 
difficulties be surmounted which met the soul at 
every stage of its perilous journey. The eff*ect of 
all this was to substitute a material for a moral 



THE -REV. CANOJN EAWLINSON, M.A. 43 

righteousness — to make ultimate salvation depend 
on memory, acquaintance with formulae, or ready 
access by priestly favour to the formulae needed. 

V. Moreover, the whole Egyptian belief on the 
subject of the dead was so inseparably bound up 
with the prevalent polytheism, w^orship of ances- 
tors, and sun-worship, that a prudent legislator, 
having to legislate for a people of material tenden- 
cies, greatly inclined to idolatry, might well hesi- 
tate to lend any countenance to views in which 
the false and the true, the elevating and the de- 
grading, were inseparably intermixed, and might 
be wise in determinino; to leave the future life in 
the vagueness and the mystery from which the 
daring speculations of the Egyptian priests had 
withdrawn it, and to concentrate men's attention 
on that present life which is their immediate con- 
cern, and the rightful conduct of which is the best 
preparation for whatever existence God designs 
them to lead in the world to come. The Egyptian 
priests, taking as their basis man's instinctive 
belief in his immortality, and his conviction that 
goodness must somewhere receive adequate reward, 
a,nd wickedness adequate punishment, built up an 
artificial system of which much was purely fanciful, 
a large portion absolutely false, and only a com- 
paratively small residuum sound and true. Bibli- 



44 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

cal theology kept itself aloof from this mixed, 
fanciful system. It implied from the first, without 
distinctly teaching it, a life beyond the grave ; it 
gradually brought this life more and more into 
prominence ; by the time of Daniel (Dan. xii. 2) 
it hinted at immortality, and at a judgment ; 
finally, by the mouth of Jesus, and of His '' be- 
loved disciple,'' it declared without ambiguity the 
nature of the judgment (Matt. xxv. 31-46; Rev. 
XX. I J- 1 5), and the fate, respectively, of those 
who shall be condemned and of those who shall 
be acquitted. It left much still in obscurity, 
especially abstaining from any description of the 
life which the blessed lead in the other world. It 
thus avoids the almost inconceivable bathos of the 
Egyptian teaching, which told of ^' cakes" and 
^'jugs of beer," and ''slices from the joint which 
lay upon the table of the supreme god." 

As the Egyptian religion was at once remarkably 
in advance of others, and at the same time in 
certain respects curiously mistaken and defective 
in its teachings on the subject of man's future 
destiny, so it was at once in advance of other 
systems and strangely defective on certain points 
in its teachings with respect to morality. The 
Egyptian idea of morality was predominantly 
negative. Justification was claimed, in the main, 



THE REV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A. 45 

upon a series of negative declarations — '' I have 
not blasphemed ; I have not deceived/' and the 
like. Hence the pleading of the soul newly ar- 
rived in Amenti before Osiris and his forty-two 
assessors has received the name of *' the negative 
confession.'' But ^'the negative confession," ex- 
tensive as it may appear to be, since it is a 
declaration of freedom from forty-two main sins, 
contains important omissions. One form alone of 
impurity is denied, and the omission of all others 
painfully reminds us of the charges brought 
against the Egyptians by the classical writers, 
who tax them both with religious impurity, and 
with a general laxity in the matter of the sexual 
relations. The charge is borne out by the levity 
of treatment which sexual irregularities receive 
at the hands of the native romance-WTiters, with 
whom they are a stock subject, and from whom 
they get no word of blame. The state of 
morals thus indicated was a natural consequence 
of the impure rites which formed a part of the 
religion, and of the free toleration by the priest 
class of the extensive polygamy and the incest 
which were practised by the kings. Again, the 
cruel treatment of enemies was not disclaimed in 
the ''negative confession;" and it is clear that it 
was widely and openly practised. Captives taken 



46 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

in war were either put to death by their captors, or 
carried off into a servitude of the most oppressive 
kind, involving in many cases continuous forced 
labour under the lash, and treatment such as made 
Egypt a '' furnace of affliction '' to the people of 
Israel. Another vice which the Egyptian was 
not required to disclaim, and which consequently 
flourished in the greatest luxuriance, was pride 
and self-conceit. The ordinary Egyptian was ac- 
customed to declare himself, not merely before the 
assessors in A menti, but on earth among his con- 
temporaries, exempt from all human imperfection. 
'' I was not an idler,'' sa3^s one ; '^ I was no listener 
to the counsels of sloth ; my name was not heard 
in the place of reproof. .... All men respected 
me. I gave water to the thirsty ; I set the wan- 
derer in his path ; I took away the oppressor, 
and put a stop to violence.'^ ^' I myself was just 
and true,'' writes another on his tombstone; "I 
was without malice, having put God in my heart, 
and being quick to discern His will. I have done 
good upon earth ; I have harboured no prejudice ; 
I have not been wicked ; I have not approved of 
any offence or iniquity ; I have taken pleasure in 
speaking the truth. . . . Pure is my soul; while 
living I bore no malice ; there are no errors 
attributable to me ; no sins of mine are before the 



THE EEV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A. 47 

judges. The men of the future, while they live, 
will be charmed by my remarkable merits." " I 
have come to thee/' says another, " Lord of Tasert, 
Osiris, Prince of Abydos. I was law-abiding while 
upon earth ; I did that which was right ; I was 
free from faults.'' Here, however, as in so many 
other cases, the Egyptian system was not wholly 
consistent with itself. While the tone of self- 
glorification is almost universal, and king after 
king, noble after noble, courtier after courtier, calls 
on us from the tomb to admire his ^^ remarkable 
merits," occasionally, but very rarely, there strikes 
upon the ear an undertone of self-humiliation and 
sadness, which affords a welcome relief. Convic- 
tion of sin has come home to a guilty soul, and the 
trembling heart pours itself out in prayer. " Come 
to me, thou Sun," says a spirit thus oppressed. 
" Horus of the Horizon, give me help ; thou art he 
that giveth help ; there is no help without thee. 
Come to me, Tum ; hear me, thou great god ! My 
heart goeth forth towards On; let my desires be 
fulfilled ; let my heart rejoice, my inmost heart 
rejoice in gladness. Hear my vows, my humble 
supplications, every day; hear my adorations 
every night — my cries of terror — cries that issue 
from my mouth, that come forth from it one by 
one. Horus of the Horizon, there is none other 



is ANCIENT EGYJ?T1AN SYSTEMS. 

beside thee, Protector of Millions, Deliverer of 
Tens of Thousands, Defender of him who calls 
upon thee. Lord of On ! Reproach me not for 
my many sins. I am young and weak of body; 
I am a man without a heart. Anxiety preys 
upon me, as an ox feeds upon grass. If I pass 
the night in sleep, and therein find refreshment, 
anxiety nevertheless returns to me ere the day 
is done." 

The positive side of the Egyptian morality con- 
tains some striking parallels with the teaching of 
the Bil)le. Monsieur F. Chabas has well compared 
the following passages : — 

" I gave my bread to the hungry, 
And drink to him that was athirst ; 
I clothed the naked with garments, 
I sheltered the wanderer." 

("Eitual of the Dead,'' ch. cxxv. § 38.) 

and — 

'* I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; 
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; 
I was a stranger, aud ye took me in ; 
(I was) naked, and ye clotlied me." 

(Matt. XXV. 35, 36.) 

But he has failed to notice that the moral teaching 
put forward in them is that of the Old Testament, 
no less than of the New, dating in Biblical theology 
from the time of Isaiah, if not even from that of 



THE REV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A. 49 

Job. If we turn to Job's protestation of his integ- 
rity (Job xxxi.), we find the following : — '' If I 
have withheld the poor from their desire, or have 
caused the eyes of the widow to fail, or have eaten 
my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath 
not eaten thereof; if I have seen any perish for 
want of clothing, or any poor without covering, if 
his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not 
warmed with the fleece of my sheep . . . then let 
mine arm fall from my shoulder-blade, and mine 
arm be broken from the bone'' (verses 16-22). In 
Isaiah the resemblance is still closer. The fast that 
God has chosen — that pleases Him — is this :— ^^ To 
deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring 
the poor that are cast out to thy house — when thou 
seest the naked, that thou cover him ; and that 
thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh " (ch. 
Iviii. 7). Elementary as is the teaching, it has a 
beautiful simplicity, which will never lose its 
charm, and a far-reaching application, which will 
always save it from being commonplace or trite. 

Monsieur Chabas has also noticed the accord 
between Egyptian and Biblical morality with 
respect to the duties of children towards their 
parents, and to the special blessing attached to 
their observance. As- the Decalogue requires chil- 
dren to honour and obey their parents, and pro- 



50 AKCIExVT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

mises them long life as the reward of their filial 
piety (Ex. XX. 7), so in the maxims of Ptah-hotep 
we find It laid down that " the son who accepts the 
words of his father will grow old in consequence" 
-or, as It IS elsewhere expressed, "will enjoy an 
honoured senility.-' To curse or revile a father 
was, by the Mosaic code, punishable with death 
(Ex. XXI. ,7) ; under the Egyptian it was a deadly 
sm, punished by exclusion from heaven. Fleshly 
fathers were entitled to chasten their children under 
both codes ; while smiting father and mother was, 
under each, an unpardonable offence. " Good for a 
son is the discipline of his father," is the Egyptian 
saying; "He that loveth his son chasteneth him 
betimes," is the dictum of the Bible. 

It is, perhaps, still more remarkable that among 
the Egyptian moral precepts is found one which is 
a near equivalent of the command of Christ— 
" Swear not at all " (Matt. v. 34). The Jews were 
strictly forbidden under the Mosaic Law to swear 
falsely (Lev. xix. 12), and the third commandment 
may be understood as intended to check the 
habitual interlarding of the conversation with oaths 
quite unsuitable to the occasion. But no Biblical 
moralist earlier than the son of Sirach distinctly 
mterdicted all oaths (or all but judicial oaths, which 
we must suppose excepted) as irreverent. In 



THE REV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A. 51 

Egypt, however, as early as the twelfth century 
B.C., it was laid down as ''a true and just precept 
of the good doctrine contained in the ancient 
texts," that men were not to '' open their mouth in 
swearing." 

But though advanced in some respects, the 
Egyptian positive morality cannot fairly be said to 
have been, altogether, of a very elevated character, 
much less " to have fallen short in nothing of the 
teachings of Christianity/' as one of its panegyrists 
has asserted. The list of virtues was a short one, 
scarcely including more than piety, truthfulness, 
justice, temperance, kindness towards the poor 
and afflicted, and obedience to parents and rulers. 
There was nothing heroic about the Egyptian 
morality. It inculcated no severe self-denial, no 
stern control of the passions, no love of enemies, no 
turning of the cheek to the smiter, no patient 
endurance of injuries, no humility, no real purity, 
no complete resignation to the Divine will under 
all circumstances. It w^as a comparatively easy 
code to keep, and we cannot be surprised that so 
many Egyptians were fully satisfied that they had 
kept it. If a man had been a fairly good son, an 
orderly subject, deeply respectful, not to say servile, 
when brought into contact w^ith the monarch, 
regular in bringing the expected offerings to the 



52 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SYSTEMS. 

temples and to the ancestral tomb, not haughty in 
his demeanour, not cruel in his treatment of his 
dependents, not given to drunkenness or to profane 
swearing, and tolerably charitable to the poor and 
distressed, he would naturally feel quite satisfied 
with himself, and entitled to declare, in the words 
of one Egyptian on his tomb, '' I was a good man 
before the king ; I shielded the weak against the 
strong ; I did all good things when the time came 
to do them ; I was pious towards my father, and 
did the will of my mother ; I was kind-hearted 
towards my brethren. When calamity befell the 
land, I made the children live, I established the 
houses ; I did for them all such, good things as a 
father doth for his sons" — or, in the words of 
another, '' I have done the behests of men, and the 
will of the gods ; I have given bread to the hungry 
and satisfied the indigent ; I have followed the god 
in his temple ; my mouth hath not spoken in- 
solently against my superior ofiicers ; there hath 
been no haughtiness in my carriage, but I have 
walked measuredly ; I have performed the law 
which the king approved ; I have understood his 
commands, and watched in my place to execute his 
will ; I have risen up for his worship every day ; I 
have given my mind to his words without con- 
sidering how he regarded me : I have observed 



THE EEV. CANON RAWLINSON, M.A. 53 

uprightness and fairness ; I have understood when 
to keep silence." The self-complacency which 
characterises the Egyptian epitaphs is the cor- 
relative and the natural consequence of the easy- 
going moral system from which the Egyptians 
generally derived their sense of the extent of their 
duties. 



ANCIENT CANAANITE RELIGIONS. 



IV. 



!Bt the Eev. Wm. WRIGHT, D.D., Secretary to the British 
AND Foreign Bible Society, and Author of " The Empire 
OF the Hittites,'^ &c. 

T^HE scientific grouping of ancient religions is 
largely due to recent philological research. 
When Bopp, in his Comparative Grammar, drew 
attention to the relationships of certain European 
languages to the idioms of Persia and India, it 
was concluded that the Greeks and Komans had 
no more invented tlieir religions than they had 
invented their languages. Their gods, like their 
words, were reckoned as heritages of the past. 
As the geologist examines the strata of the earth, 
so the philologist examines the structure of lan- 
guages. Fossil words, by the processes of com- 
parative philology, live again in the light and the 
local colour of bygone ages, and not only reveal 
the secrets of their own youth, but are eloquent 
as to the origin and growth of the current thought 



THE REV. WILLIAM WRIGHT, D.D. 55 

and religion of their time. The current language 
of an age embodies the living thought of that age, 
and beneath the dead crust of the language is dis- 
covered the religious sentiment which once touched 
the imngination, and fired the heart and swayed 
the religious instinct of the people. Through the 
letter of the word the spirit is reached, and thus 
comparative mythology, or the science of religion, 
is a branch of philology. 

Comparative grammar, in recent years, has de- 
monstrated that the language of Phoenicia was the 
language of Canaan ; indeed Canaan, or Lowlands, 
was the designation by which the Phoenicians knew 
their own country before the descriptive title was 
extended to the whole of Palestine. The people of 
Phoenicia and the people of Canaan were brothers, 
and their gods and religion, like their language, 
w^ere common to both people. There were differ- 
ences of dialect among the inhabitants of ancient 
Canaan, but the former inhabitants of the land, 
subdued by the invading Israelites, were, with 
perhaps the exception of the retreating Hittites, 
branches of the same Semitic stock, one in lan- 
guage and religion. 

The Phoenicians were the great commercial and 
colonising people of antiquity. Their narrow foot- 
hold between the mountains and the main was the 



56 ANCIENT CANAANITE RELIGIONS. 

commercial centre of the world. The coast villages 
became mighty cities, the storehouses of Eastern 
and Western merchandise. The desert caravans 
bore the luxuries of the East to the gates of Tyre 
and Sid on, and the hardy PhcBnician sailors, from 
the terraced homes of Lebanon, steered their white- 
winged ships through all known seas, distributing 
the products of civilisation among the Western 
barbarians. The Phoenicians, the predecessors of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, pushed out from the con- 
tracted homeland their surplus and enterprising 
population, and planted colonies on the lines of 
their commerce. The Phoenician in search of gain, 
or of a new home, did not leave his religion behind 
him. The colonists erected splendid temples in the 
lauds of their adoption to the gods of Phoenicia, 
and even in distant Ireland Phoenician influence is 
traced in the Baal fires and in the ancient worship 
of the Baal of heaven. 

As to the real character of Phoenician religion, 
we have scarcely any information from the Phoeni- 
cians themselves. Josephus informs us that every 
Phoenician city had its collection of registers and 
public documents. It is believed that the Phoeni- 
cians may have written on clay like the Assyrians, 
and yet, notwithstanding the enormous number of 
colonies planted by the Phoenicians, and the mar- 



THE REV. WILLIAM WRIGHT, D.D. 57 

vellous commercial enterprise and literary careful- 
ness of the people, a few short inscriptions and 
some sculptures and gems are as yet their only 
records of themselves. Philo of Byblus, in the 
reign of Hadrian, gave to the world what pur- 
ported to be a version of Sanchoniathon's history 
of Phoenicia and Egypt. Some quotations made 
from Philo's work by Porphyrins found their way 
into the writings of Eusebius. Philo's work has 
been looked upon by some as a forgery, but it is 
probable that he had access to original Phoenician 
documents, even if Sanchoniathon may have been 
as shadowy a historian as our own Ossian. The 
portions of the work that have come down to us 
are confused fragments, but they supply a few 
threads which, joined with others, furnish a clue 
to the religion of the people. 

In the paucity of material for coming to a satis- 
factory conclusion as to the religion of Phoenicia, 
the newly discovered records of the buried cities of 
Babylonia and Assyria come to our aid. 

According to tradition the Phoenicians came 
from near the Persian Gulf, and it now appears 
that they spoke the same language as that em- 
ployed by Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees. The 
unearthed libraries of Assyria have enabled the 
comparative grammarian to prove that the Ian- 



58 ANCIENT CANAANITE RELIGIONS. 

guages of the PhoeiiiciaDS, the Canaanites, the 
Moabites, the Hebrews, and the Assyrians are 
not only descended from the same stock, but are 
closely allied to each other as different dialects of 
the same language. According to Professor Sayce, 
^^ Assyrian turns out to be very closely related to 
Hebrew, as closely related, in fact, as two strongly 
marked English dialects are to one another. There 
is no other Semitic language (except, of course, 
Phoenician, which is practically the same as He- 
brew) which is so closely allied to it." ^ The 
Canaanitish religion thus differing from the Assy- 
rian only as one English dialect differs from an- 
other, we may look to the Assyrian for information 
as to the religion of Canaan. 

While the first wave of Semitic migration was 
settling in the Palm land, on the east coast of 
the Mediterranean, the Semites who remained in 
Babylonia were gaining the ascendency over their 
Accadian predecessors. Semitic force prevailed 
over Accadian, but Accadian religion and culture 
triumphed over the Semites. The gods of the 
Accadians were taken over by the Assyrians, who 
semiticised the civilisation, the culture, and the 
religion of the early inhabitants of Babylonia 
whom they supplanted. The religion of Assyria 

^ Assyria : Its Princesi and People^ p. 1 1. 



THE EEV. WILLIAM WEIGHT, D.D. 59 

was Accadianism in Semitic moulds, and compara- 
tive philology demonstrates that the religion of 
Assyria in its main features became the religion of 
the Canaanites, whether inhabitiug the land of 
Palestine, or colonising the islands and shores of 
the Mediterranean. 

" The Semitic," says Professor Max Miiller, ''like 
the Aryan Languages, possesses a number of names 
of the Deity in common, which must have existed 
before the Southern, or Arabic, the Northern, or 
Aramaic, the middle, or Hebrew, branches, became 
permanently separated, and which, therefore, allow 
us an insight into the religious conceptions of the 
once united Semitic race long before Jehovah was 
worshipped by Abraham, or Baal was invoked in 
Phoenicia, or EL in Babylon." ^ 

The Accadian El, or Ilu, is perhaps the earliest 
name by which the Deity was known. The name 
appears in Babylonia in Bab-jE'^. In Hebrew, Ha- 
El, Beth-jE^Z, El-Ely on, &c. In Phoenician we have 
El, son of the earth, and Philo connects the word 
with Elohim. It is the lUh, or Allah, of the 
Arabic tongue. 

The god Bel, or Baal, was worshipped in Baby- 
lonia, Assyria, Phoenicia, Moab, Philistia, Carthage, 
gnd throughout the Phoenician colonies, and the 
1 Introduction to the Science of Languages, p. no. 



60 ANCIENT CANAANITE KELIGIONS. 

name still clings to distant lands with which the 
Phoenicians traded. 

The name of the one Accadian goddess, Istar, 
may be read on the Moabite monument of King 
Mesha, and among the inscriptions of the city of 
Zenobia. The Semites gave to the name the femi- 
nine form Ashtoreth, by which she was known 
among the Canaanites, and she became the Astartd 
of Askelon and Paphos, and the Aphrodite of the 
Greeks. 

Other deities, such as Melech, or Moloch, 
Adonai, or Adonis, may also be traced in the 
common language of the different branches of the 
Semitic peoples. As the language and chief 
deities of Canaan were in close affinity to those 
of the other branches of the Semitic family, so 
the religion of Canaan resembled closely the rites 
practised by the other Semitic peoples. 

The centre and chief object of Canaanitish wor- 
ship was the Sun-god, Baal ; and the Baal religion 
was based largely on the feelings of reverence or 
awe. The Accadians considered that every object 
or phenomenon in Nature possessed a spirit, and 
that these multitudinous spirits were either bene- 
volent or malevolent. When the Semitic Baby- 
lonians took over the Acadian Pantheon they 
changed Anu, the supreme Sky-god, into Shamas, 



THE REV. WILLIAM WRIGHT, D.D. 61 

the Sun-god, and they endowed him with the 
qualities of active benevolence and active malevo- 
lence. 

The Canaaiiites adored the Snn-god, Baal, as the 
chaser away of darkness and cold, and the giver of 
light and heat. He was ''Baal," the dual-natured 
deity of life and fruitfulness. The Baal, the male 
principle of life and reproduction in Nature, was 
worshipped by the Canaanites in conjunction with 
Ashera, the female principle of Nature. They 
looked upon the Baal as the god of Heaven, who 
made earth fertile and gladsome, and whose func- 
tion was recognised in all the generative forces of 
Nature. 

Baal, the active principle of Nature, was generally 
allied with Ashera, the passive ; but he was some- 
times associated with Ashtoreth or Astarte, and 
Baal in the plural was associated with Ashtoreth 
in the plural, as in i Sam. vii. 4, where it is said, 
^' The children of Israel did put away Baalim and 
Ashtaroth, and served the Lord only." 

The confusion that, has arisen by confounding 
Ashera with Ashtoreth has been accounted for by 
Professor Robertson-Smith in the following man- 
ner : — 

^'Tlie planet Venus was worshipped in Assyria 
as the chaste goddess I star, when she appeared as 



62 ANCIENT CANAANITE EELIGIONS. 

the morning star, and as the impure Beltis when 
she was the evening star. These two goddesses, 
associated yet contrasted, seem to correspond re- 
spectively to the chaste Ashtoreth and the foul 
Asli^ra, though the distinction between the rising 
and setting planet was not kept up, and the nobler 
deity came at length to be viewed as the goddess 
of the moon.'' 

The Sun-god, Baal, was malevolent when in the 
heat of summer he exhausted the sap of life, burnt 
up the grass, drunk the rivers dry, and slew the 
people with miasma fever. As calamities were 
supposed to befall the Accadians through the in- 
strumentality of the malevolent spirits, so the 
Canaanites believed that calamities befell them 
through the wrath of Baal. In every form of evil 
they recognised the displeasure of Baal. Hence it 
became necessary to appease the god ; and as the 
Accadians used to offer human sacrifices to avert 
the wrath of the malevolent Zi, or spirits, so the 
Canaanites sacrificed their firstborn sons to appease 
the relentless deity. The fiery Sun-god demanded 
a sacrifice by fire. The offering must be a real 
sacrifice. He would have nothing but the best, 
the firstborn, the only son, and the offering had to 
be made willingly, and with signs of gladness. 
The children were burnt alive, the victims and the 



THE KEV. WILLIAM WRIGHT, D.D. 63 

image of the god being garlanded with flowers, and 
the hideous ceremony was accompanied with music 
and other signs of joy. Prof. Sayce, speaking of 
this act of Canaanitish worship, which became com- 
mon among the Canaanites, says, ^^ It was no sign 
of savagery or brutality, but of profound self-sacri- 
fice, which led the worshipper to give even more 
than his own life to the oflended gods. It was, in 
fact, a true auto da fe, or act of faith ; and so 
deeply looted was the conviction of its necessity, 
that not only did the Israelites yield again and 
again to its fascination, despite the remonstrances 
of the prophets, but in far later times, when Car- 
thage had been overthrown by the Eomans, all the 
edicts of the conquerors, all the vigilance of the 
police, were unable to prevent the horrible sacri- 
fices from secretly taking place.'' 

Notwithstanding the stern warnings against this 
form of Canaanite idolatry (Lev. xviii. 21, and xx. 
2-5) the Israelites sometimes joined in the abomi- 
nable sacrifices. We find the Kings Ahaz (2 
Kings xvi. 3) and Manasseh (2 Kings xxi. 6) 
causing ^' their children to pass through the fire'' 
to Baal. Nor is this phrase a mere euphemism to 
avoid the mention of a barbarous rite, as some sup- 
pose, but expresses the idea which underlay the 
sacrifice. The children by passing through the fire 



64 ANCIENT CANAAN ITE RELIGIONS. 

were purified from earthly dross, and rendered fit 
to enjoy the favour of the god. 

Movers has clearly established the fact that 
Moloch is only a special development of Baal in 
his destructive instead of in his life-giving mood. 
And it was to Moloch, as king, that human sacri- 
fices were off'ered. This is abundantly clear from 
the language of the prophets (Jer. xxxii. 35), 
^^ They built the high places of Baa1, which are in 
the valley of the sons of Hinnom, to cause their 
sons and their daughters to pass through the fire 
to Moloch/' (See also Jer. vii. 31 ; xix. 5.) As 
Creutzer has pointed out, Moloch the king, and 
Baal the lord, are simply difi^erent names of the 
Sun-god, but in altered relations — Moloch is the 
Sun, who, in his course through the signs of Zodiae, 
burns up his own children. 

Another form of Canaanitish worship, connected 
with the dual-natured god, became a snare to the 
people of Israel. Baal, as the active male principle 
associated in worship with the unchaste Ashera, 
became the patron of sensuality and licensed har- 
lotry. We see an instance of this worship at Baal- 
Peor (Num. xxv.) Baal was represented on the 
idolatrous high places by stone obelisks, or upright 
columns, while Ashera (translated groves in the Au- 
thorised Version) was represented by tree trunks, 



THE REV. WILLIAM WRIGHT, D.D. 65 

or upright ^Yooden posts. It is believed that these 
symbols had not always been associated with the 
foul rites of Baal, but that they had been the 
memorials of the places where worshippers had 
once been in contact with God (Gen. xxviii. i8, 
22). In process of time they became the symbols 
of Nature- worship, and as such fell under the con- 
demnation of the prophets of Jehovah (Isa. xvii. 8; 
xxvii. 9; Micah v. 13-14). 

As the firstborn sons w^ere passed through the 
fire to Baal-Molech, so chaste virgins were devoted 
to wickedness in the name of religion. But it was 
not religion. It was only Eitual, unconnected 
with morality. In these unspeakable rites the 
Baal demanded the purest, the loveliest, and the 
most tenderly loved, and Canaanitish religion com- 
pelled its devotees to comply with the requests of 
the deity. Fathers and mothers, with heroic self- 
sacrifice devoted their young daughters to the re- 
morseless god, believing that they were performing 
acts of boundless merit in the sight of heaven. So 
completely may ecclesiastic ritual be divorced from 
morality ! 

It is no wonder that this form of Canaanitish 
worship was so hateful in the sight of God's pro- 
phets, or that such condign punishment was meted 
out to the chosen people when ^^ they forsook the 



66 ANCIENT CANAAN ITE EELIGIONS, 

Lord, and served Baal and Ashtoretf (Judges 
ii. 13 ; iii. 7). Their ^^ fathers dwelt on the other 
side of the flood (river) in old time, even 
Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of 
Nahor; and they served other gods" (Joshua 
xxiv. 2). What made Abraham aud his seed to 
differ from the Semitic worshippers of other 
gods ? The one true God had called them to be 
His people. 

According to Max Mtiller, ^* the worship of Je- 
hovah made the Jews a peculiar people, the people 
of Jehovah, separated by their God, though not by 
their language, from the people of Chemosh, and 
from the worshippers of Baal and Ashtoreth. It 
was their faith in Jehovah that changed the wan- 
dering tribes of Israel into a nation." ^ 

Abraham heard the voice and followed the lead- 
ing of Jehovah, and he became the father of the 
chosen people, who in Egypt, in the desert, among 
the Canaanites, and the other peoples of the world, 
remained witnesses to the one Living and True 
God. Phoenicia might barter her merchandise in 
all lands ; Egypt might erect her mighty monu- 
ments ; the Hittites might beat back the tides of 
invasion ; Greece might instruct the world in cul- 
ture and artistic beauty ; Eome might teach the 

1 Introduction to the Science of Eeligiony p. 2>6, 



THE REV. WILLIAM WEIGHT, D.D. 67 

rations law and order ; but the descendants of 
that one man, called by Jehovah out of Ur of the 
Chaldees, preserved among the nations the know- 
ledge of a personal holy God nigh at hand, who 
knoweth the righteous and who will ^' by no means 
clear the guilty/' 

How did it happen that the other Semitic 
peoples differed from the seed of Abraham by 
practising crime-stained religions ? They too bad 
heard the voice of '' the one Living and True 
God." Canon Eav^linson, in his admirable tract 
on '^ The Early Prevalence of Monotheistic Beliefs/' 
tells us ^Hhat in the early times, everywhere, or 
almost everywhere, belief in the unity of God 
existed." This is admitted generally, as regards 
the Semitic peoples, and it can be demonstrated 
from their inscriptions and their literature. What 
then is the secret of their reli2:ious degradation ? 
The true scientific historical answer is given by 
the Apostle Paul: ^'Because that knowing God, 
they glorified Him not as God, neither gave 
thanks ; but became vain in their reasonings, and 
their senseless heart was darkened. Professing 
themselves to be wise, they became fools, and 
changed the glory of the incorruptible God for 
the likeness of an image of corruptible man . . . 
wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their 



68 ANCIENT CANAANITE RELIGIONS. 

hearts unto uucleanness, that their bodies should 
be dishououred among themselves ; for that they 
changed the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped 
and served the creature rather than the Creator, 
who is blessed for ever. Amen." 



EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS. 



V. 



By the Eev. EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A., late Professor of 
Classical Literature, New College, London, 

"VfO one who has lived with the Greek religious 
traditions — the deposit of a dateless antiquity 
— long enough to appreciate their profound signi- 
ficance in the life of the people, and through them 
upon our own culture, can care to deal in hasty 
generalisations upon a subject so far-reaching in 
its scope as that which is stated at the head of 
this paper. 

"What can we do beyond rapidly indicating a 
few points of view, from which long perspectives 
profitable study open out? Such a standpoint, 
for example, is the period of Alexander and his 
successors, when the Greek language, Greek man- 
ners, Greek intuitions and philosophies made their 
way in Asia Minor, in Palestine, and, above all, 
in Alexandria. The Septuagint translation of the 
Hebrew Scriptures marks an epoch of the great- 



70 EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS. 

est moment in connection with the origins of 
our religion. The Greek myth of the miraculous 
unanimity of the translators^ witnesses to this in 
one way. In another way, the feeling of Jewish 
doctors witnesses to the same thing. Denuncia- 
tions of the sacrilegious act occur in the Talmud ; 
for it was thought that a garbled version of the 
sacred records had been given to the world. ^ 
And hatred of swine and hatred of Greek learn- 
ing seem to have been passions of equal strength. 
Yet this is but one side of the case. A recoil 
was certain to follow from the first impetuous at- 
tack on a thing so all-pervading as Greek culture. 
And Dr Joel, the accomplished Eabbi of Breslau, 
has recently shown the other aspect of the matter. 
When the boy Ovid — as the tale runs — promised 
his father, after a beating, that he would give up 
verse making, he did so — in a hexameter ! Simi- 
larly, the Eabbins rebuked the teaching of Greek, 
using Greek words in the act. Some of them even 
recommended Greek for girls. And the time came 
when proselytising Pharisees found the Septuagint 
useful, probably indispensable, in their work.^ A 
stream takes colour from the bed through which it 

1 See Pseudo- Justin Martyr, Cohort^ 13. 

2 Joel, Blicke. Edersheim, Life of Jesus, i. 30. 
^ Stapfer, La Palestine au temps de Jesus Christ. 



THE REV. EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A. 7l 

flows ; and that, from about two centuries before 
Christ, the oracles of the Hebrew prophets should 
have been conveyed to the world through the 
vehicle of the Greek logos, is one of the most im- 
portant facts in the history of our religion. This 
w^edding of Jewish substance with Hellenic form 
reaches its complete expression in Philo, a most 
epochal man.^ Not without reason have scholars 
seen in him the father of Catholic theology, or the 
fount and origin of that mystical apprehension of 
the Old Testament Scriptures which has obtained 
ever since his day, and which will to all appear- 
ance still obtain. There seems no reason why 
Philo himself should not have embraced the new 
faith which was destined to spiritual empire : he 
was not a Judaiser, but rather a Helleniser ; not 
a zealot for the observance of the Law, but rather 
a champion of spiritual freedom. He reads the 
current ideas of the educated world into the 
Hebrew Scriptures, not out of them. 

But the name of Philo reminds us of his em- 
bassy to Eome, and of Apion, the slanderous 
Greek who went with him, and whom Josephus 
later so severely handled ; and this again reminds 
us of the bitter feuds between Greeks and Jews 

1 Parallels between him and the recently discovered DidacMoi the 
Apostles are shown in the edition of Massebieau. 



72 EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS. 

at Alexandria, and the unhappy mutual aspersions 
in which they indulged. Here again is a point 
of moment in reference to our subject. In that 
intense and long rivalry of two conquered peoples, 
— both so highly endowed, — ^for spiritual mastery 
over their conquerors, which in the end prevailed, 
Jews or Hellenes ? Is our religion more a debtor, 
humanly and historically speakiug, to these or to 
those ? Or are we to see in Christianity, after 
the same manner of speaking, a chemic combina- 
tion of the Hellenic with the Hebrew spirit ? ^ 
Surely these are questions for patient analytic 
study in detail, rather than for swift and sweep- 
ing decision. To say nothing of the strong con- 
trast between such w^ritings as the '*Book of 
Enoch," and the writings of the Greek apologists 
and fathers, in the New Testament itself the 
diverse currents of theological belief, the Judaic 
and the anti-Judaic feeling, are too marked not 
to demand renewed inquiry on the part of every 
thoughtful student. 

Let us select another standpoint. Let us plant 
ourselves in Hellas itself early in the second cen- 
tury A.D. Here we are in the hands of a guide 

1 On Early Christianity^ Rooted in the Old Testament and the 
Hellenic Spirit, — Of. Harnack on Havet's Le Christianisme in Theol, 
Lit, Ztg., 1885. 



THE REV. EDWm JOHNSON, M. A. 73 

and witness wbom we cannot too liiglily value, 
Paiisanias, an Asiatic Greek, a man of plain and 
unsophisticated thought, of competent learnings 
of simple piety, a man to be respected. After all 
that has been written on the subject, let lis re- 
peat what others have said before, that the Ferie- 
gesis of this writer is our best introduction, on 
the whole, to the story of Greek religion and 
mythology. But this is a book you must pore 
over for years. The information Pausauias gives 
us is often far from self-intelli2:ible. When our 
curiosity is excited by the hope of discovering 
something, our guide tells us that he is under 
the vow of an initiate, or that he is warned by a 
dream not to divulge the secret truth. Still, 
much may be gleaned by patient thought and 
comparison ; and the sense grows upon us in this 
study that nowhere was religion held in a more 
intense and awe-stricken manner, nowhere was the 
popular intuition more ghostly, more saturated 
with the presence of spiritual life and activity than 
in ancient Hellas. Another book, dense with trage- 
dies and horrors, is the Bibliotheca of Apollo- 
doros.^ No one who desires to get a deep im- 
pression of the religious ideas of the Greeks should 
omit the reading of the legends, as they here are 

1 C. 1 1 5 B.C. 



74 EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS. 

evidently told without a touch of extenuation. A 
student will be pardoned if he insists that the 
subject caunot be ''got up" from handbooks, nor 
yet from the perusal of Mr. Morris's ''Epic of 
Hades.'* The most striking and luminous com- 
mentary on the Greek religious myths that has 
yet been furnished, is to be found in the lore of 
negroes and other tribes of the great continents, 
and of the islands of the present day. Tilings 
that are dark and enigmatic to us in the mytho- 
graphers would be perfectly intelligible to the 
savage, if rendered into his tongue. The fear 
of the ghosts of the dead, who pass now under the 
name of '' Heroes,'' now under that of ''Daemons," 
is the one pole of Greek religion ; the other is the 
belief in gods who were saviours, atoners, purifiers, 
healers, imparters of dreams and of oracles. 

If we desire to study the influence of Greek 
religious conceptions upon Christian theology, we 
can hardly do better than compare Pausanias with 
Justin Martyr, who is nearly his contemporary. 
There are points in this comparison which will 
strike every student coming freshly to the subject 
with great force. For example, the conception of 
incarnate, human, sufi^ering, atoning deity is not 
once, but many times, exhibited in the Greek re- 
ligious myths, in a manner certainly less refined 



THE REV. EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A. 75 

thnn that of the Gospels, but one that indicates 
intense popular belief and pathos. The concep- 
tion of the mother goddess, in some cases the 
union of the conceptions of maiden and mother 
(Athena, Artemis), was also mightily endeared to 
the Hellenes. We caimot wonder at the enthrone- 
ment of the Panagia on the Athenian Acro[^oUs 
in place of her who sprang from the brain of 
Zeus. Justin Martyrs ''Apology" and ''Dialogue 
with Tiypho '' show how keenly he felt the force 
of Hellenic analogies to Christianity.^ But how 
does he dispose of them ? In a way that can 
satisfy nowadays no common-sense Christian. 
The birth legends of the gods are set down to 
the invention of " wicked daemons.'' The resem- 
blance betw^een the mysterious rites of the god 
Mithras and the Eucharist is ascribed to the like 
devilish imitation. But the worship of Mithras 
long antedates Christianity. How does Justin 
distinguish the Christian beliefs in the incarna- 
tion of the atoning cross from corresponding 
heathen beliefs ? He finds them prefigured in 
the Old Testament. Hardly would an intelligent 
apologist of the present day care to use such ar- 
guments, or think that other than mischief could 
be done by them. But Justin's method is another 

^ AjooL I, 21, 54, 62, 64, 66 ; Dial. c. Tryph. 69, 70. 



76 EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS. 

remarkable proof of the powerful spell exerted by 
the Hebrew Scriptures in the propagation of the 
new faith — interpreted, that is, and suffused by 
Greek reasonings. The strong tbiug in Justin 
Martyr is his doctrine of the immanence of the 
logos in Socrates, and in the ^' Barbarians.'' -^ Had 
he been consistent with that, he might have felt 
his way to the true basis of '' Christian evid- 
ences," namely, that our religion Las its founda- 
tion in the conscience, the affections, and the ideal 
nature of man. As they stand, his ''apologies" 
awaken doubts which they cannot quell ; and one 
cannot conceive of any bnt the weakest heads 
converted whether from Judaism or from pagan- 
ism by them. The analogies of the supernatural 
in Hellenism and in Christianity, which his 
^' wicked demons," ex machina, are introduced 
to explain, still demand our careful examination. 
Are they possibly, like other cases of reputed 
analogy, resolvable into identities of intuition ? 
The demands of a true sacred science, a sacred 
anthropology, if you will, are not met till these 
and kindred problems are in all candour and ear- 
nestness grappled with. 

Pausanias, living in the time of Hadrian and 

1 See the recent treatise of Professor V. G, AUen, The Continuity 
of Christian Thought. 



THE REV. EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A. 77 

the Antonines, apparently knows notliiiig of the 
new relioious movement which was destined to 
dispossess gods and heroes from the shrines he 
visited with all a pilgrim's zeal. And his know- 
ledge of the Jews is as limited as that of Plut- 
arch, of Tacitus, and other writers of the first two 
centuries. Pausanias has heard of the Sabbatli 
of the Jews, and of their prophetic lore. And 
there rises before his imagination the figure of 
^^an oracular woman among the Hebrews beyond 
Palestine, whose name was Sabbe, and who was 
said to be daughter of Berosus and of Eiymanthe. 
Some call her the Babylonian and others the Egyp- 
tian Sibyir' (lo, 12, 5). Compare the idle tales 
about early Jewish history in Tacitus' '' Histories'' 
(v. I S.) and in the ^^ Epitome" of Junian Justin 
(c. 160 A.D.) : what a gulf, caused by ignorance, 
deepened by antipathy, is fixed between the Eoman 
and the Jewish and early Christian world! The 
genial and learned Plutarch (c. lOO A.D.) made the 
profound discovery that the '^God of the Hebrews" 
was none other than Dionysos, apparently because 
at the Feast of Tabernacles wine was enjoyed, and 
an invocation was made which sounded like a name 
of the Greek god ! ^ A little later Tacitus (c. 1 16 
A.D.) was writing down (the first time, probably^, a 

^ Symp. iv. and foil. 



78 EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS. 

Eoman pen dropped the word) the Christiani and 
their '' deadly superstition." Duriug the second 
century, Greek and Roman religions, ever in spiri- 
tual alliauce, the Ejyptian rites of Tsis and the 
Persian rites of Miihras still ''held the field." 
How did Christianity attain to spiritual empire ? 
How did it quell those ''wicked demons''? By 
exorcism in the name of Jesus, is the chief ex- 
planation of Justin Martyr. As the Christian 
Church has long ceased to recognise the functions 
of the exorcist, this is for us hardly an intelligible 
explanation. Nor can we find what we need in 
that naive literature which passes under the uame 
of the "Apostolic Fathers!"^ Massive popular 
movements and changes are never traceable to 
origins of that kind. In truth, the whole pro- 
gress of Christianity from the time of Trajan and 
Hadrian, when it began to make itself seriously 
felt, is like the course of one of the subterranean 
rivers of Greece. We cannot adequately trace it 
in any written souices. It is sometimes said that 
heathendom "perished before the blows" of the 
Christian apologists and fathers. But it is diffi- 
cult to think of anything being overcome by 

1 The first six chapters of the Didache compared with Ep. Bar- 
nabace 18-20, and Apost. Constt., bk. vii., also with Testaments of the 
Twelve Patriarchs, are richly ethical, not theological. See Dr. War- 
field's art. in Bibl, jSacra., Jan. 1886. 



THE REV. EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A. 79 

tlieir declamations, for the most part so weak 
and rhetorical. There were in the second and 
the third century men far more than a match for 
the '^fathers" in point of learning and art, had 
the future of Christianity depended on such re- 
sources. It is painful in this respect to turn from 
the pages of Plutarch, of Lucian, of Athenaeus, of 
Pausanias, and again from Plotinus and Porphyry, 
to the new polemists. It is an exchange of intel- 
lectual wealth for poverty. The life of the mass 
of the people is little affected by controversies of 
the educated. It is a still life ; it goes on from 
generation to generation, stirred with the like 
pathos, nourished by the same thoughts, rooted 
in the associations of the old festivals. Names 
change, but the time-honoured customs are kept 
up under them, until they are put down by force 
or their profit ceases. A compromise was silently 
going on during these times ; the early Jewish- 
Christian conception of the Christ, and the expec- 
tation of the Parousia, passed away ; the demands 
of a rigid monotheism yielded to the prevalence of 
the Hellenic spirit, which finally triumphed at the 
Council of Nicsea. 

If, now, we take our stand with the fathers of 
the third and fourth century, we find the whole 
representation of Christian dogma coloured by old 



80 EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS. 

Hellenic feeling and intuition. Take the dogma 
of the atonement. It is startling to modern ideas 
to find the sacrifice of Christ represented as a 
ransom paid to the devil on behalf of the human 
race, in consequence of a Divine pact.^ Yet so 
Origen and Basil taught, with the use of imagery 
the most realistic and coarse. They did but fall 
in with prevailing conceptions. For what lay 
implicit in the legend of Apollo and his combat 
with the fiendish Python at Delphi, was the belief 
that the god, menaced at his birth by infernal 
power, was destined to overcome it, and that by 
self-sacrifice. While the heathen Plutarch ex- 
presses distaste for the tale of the god and the 
serpent told by the theologoi of Delphi, the Cliris- 
tian Minucius Felix, on the other hand, tells us that 
the tradition ran that the god was swallowed up 
of the Python. It may be inferred that the Chris- 
tian atonement could not be understood by the 
people except under analogies borrowed from the 
old religions. And so with other matters. The 
old idea of initiation in the mysteries, and of a 
secret knowledge reserved for the few, is kept up 
in Chrysostom, who very frequently uses the phrase, 
" The initiated know."' 

1 See Mr. Oxenham's work on The Atonement, 2d ed. 

2 It is notewortliy also that this distinction of mysis and am^sts 
is already in Philo. 



THE REV. EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A. 81 

If we study only the lore of leading Hellenic 
deities in historical times, Zeus, Apollo, Dionysos, 
we cannot but feel how fertile a bed liad long been 
preparing for the new seed. That lore contains, 
under dramatic forms of narrative, representations 
the most tragic of the necessity of human sacrifice, 
of the slaying Either and the slain son, the vicari- 
ous animal substitute, of the liereditary blood-guilt 
only to be wiped out by annual or other periodic 
atonements and purifications. The need of willing^ 
hood on the part of the human victims is also 
strongly impressed in many legends of a most 
thrilling character. The rites of Dionysos Eleu- 
therios, the Liberator, have been well compared 
with the Paschal Feast, when the one sacrifice of 
the tribal god on behalf of his people, doing away 
with the cruel necessity of the slaughter of their 
own children, is thankfully commemorated.^ 

With regard to the future life, there is no 
reason to suppose that it was ever doubted of by 
the general mind in Greece. Initiation was craved 
because it was believed to ensure well-being both 
in the present life and in the life to come. It is 
a charge frequently brought by the early Christians 
against the heathen, that they worshipped '^ dead 

^ Cf, Julius Lippert, Die Religg. der Eur op. CuUur-Volker, one of 
the most luminous of recent writers on these subjects. 



82 EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS. 

gods." Certainly the ancestral tomb was the great 
focus of Hellenic piety. But the departed were the 
spiritually living in the belief of the people. And 
the idea of the baptism in fire by which the 
hiimamtm onus, the burden of flesh and blood, 
might be removed and immortality be secured, sur- 
vived and reasserted itself in the doctrine of purga- 
tory. 

Christian teachers came brino^ing; a messao:e of 
soteria, of salvation to the world. But the mind 
of the heathen was no blank in respect to the 
nature of soteria. He meant by it the aversion of 
disease from the body, famine from the fields, de- 
fence against the power of evil spirits, oracular 
guidance for the future, good hopes for all time. 
There was an intense craving for salvation in the 
Hellenic world, in this sense, at the beginning of 
our era, a deep and sorrowful sense of degradation 
from a once happier state. One of the most note- 
worthy passages in Pausanias is that where his 
mind reverts to ble.^sed times wh-n the gods held 
close communion with mortals, and were born from 
mortals. The great fame of the god Asklepios 
(Aesculapius) in Argolis and Athens during his- 
torical times is another striking evidence of the 
state of popular feeling. His worship was the 
centre of a great system of '^ faith-healing.'' The 



THE REV. EDWIK JOHNSON, M.A. 83 

s[)ring and the gymnasium lay hard by the temple. 
Pilgrims were believed to gain invigoration for the 
body and comfort for the mind in nightly visions. 
The god was held to have raised many heroes from 
the dead. 

When we consider how shnrply and sternly the 
most enlightened Jewish spirits, and again the Jew- 
ish-Christian '' Apostles and prophets/' of whose 
life and teaching so interesting glimpses are given 
US in the Didache, opposed not only common 
heathen vices of the flesh, but also the practices 
of sorcery and divination, so rife in the Hellenic- 
Eoman religions ; how at the same time they met 
the yearning for salvation by the preaching of a 
creed at once sublime and simple^ a morality in 
every sense sound and sweet : we may, perhaps, 
see where the victorious principle in the new re- 
lioion was felt to lie. But as ever in human affairs, 
the tide rolled back ; once more, victi victoribus 
leges dederitnt. Heathendom reconquered most of 
its lost ground, even as Rome reconquered in 
Southern Europe after the Eeformation. If the 
question be asked, *'Is the religion of the mass of 
the people under the rule of the Greek and Roman 
Churches at the present day more heathen or Chris- 
tian ? '' it must be answered that the wh(jle question 
of the relations of new religions to old, partly anti- 



84 EARLIER HELLENIC RELIGIONS. 

pathetic, partly sympathetic, demands ever fresh 
consideration. Beneath all historical changes, there 
ever remain some nnchanoingr elements. To detect 
these is to get at the heart of the matter, for, ideally 
or spiritually speaking, there is but one religion. 
If, however, it be still, to every serious student, 
one of the most difficult things in the world to 
understand the history of our religion during the 
first two centuries, how much more so to understand 
those systems which had for so many centuries 
been preparing the ground for it in Greek and 
Eoman culture. Among the many works we have 
consulted on the subject, we are inclined to think 
the work of Hartung on the Eeligion and Mytho- 
logy of the Greeks will be found most suggestive 
to the general student. The mere examination of 
the rich, religious vocabulary of the Greeks will of 
itself teach how mistaken it is to assume, as has 
been often done, that ''Nature worship" rather 
than spiritual experience lies at the foundation of 
their religions. 



( 85 ) 



THE JEWISH FAITH. 



VI. 



By Eabbi G. J. EMANUEL, B A., of the Jews' Synagogue, 
Birmingham. 

n^HEEE nre few more gratifying signs of our ad- 
vanced and still advancing civilisation, than 
the marked and continually growing decrease of 
the animosity arising from difference of religious 
belief. In times past, men who, but for this dif- 
ference, might have been friendly neighbours and 
mutually helpful fellow-citizens, were thereby sepa- 
rated into hostile bands. Dogmas rose up between 
them like huge walls; and from behind these walls, 
within which they stood like armed garrisons, they 
glared angrily out on all beyond the narrow bound- 
aries of their sect. These walls have been lowered, 
the light of reason has entered the dark enclosures, 
the free air of liberty has swept through the close 
penfolds, and men, casting down their weapons, 
wonder why they regarded as enemies those who 



8G THE JEWISH FAITH. 

but exercised like themselves the godlike faculty of 
thougljt, and stood firm to tbeir convictions. 

A most striking and significant instance of tliis 
welcome change, is furnished by the changed rda- 
tioDS of Judaism and Christianity. Christianity 
could once see in Judaism only blind, obstinate, 
wilful and sinful disbelief, an infatuated clinoinof 
to what it denounced as superstitious practices, a 
mad rejection of what it proclaimed the only possi- 
bility of salvation. While Judaism could see in 
Christianity only an active denial of its most 
cherished convictions — denial of God's Unity, denial 
of God's spirituality, denial of God's unswerving 
justice in rewarding the good and punishing the 
sinful — idolatry the more hopeless because bound 
up with it was belief in the true God — and withal, 
a ferocious enemy and implacable persecutor. 

The two faiths are beginning to understand each 
other better. Christianity does Judaism the jus- 
tice of admitting that it has moulded a race 
marked, if not by heroic, at least by substantial 
virtues — by parental care, conjugal fidelity, and 
filial aff^ection ; by brotherly love, tender compas- 
sion, large-hearted philanthropy, and a passionate 
attachment to liberty. While Judaism gladly ac- 
knowledges that '^Christianity has carried the 
golden germs of religion and morality, long hidden 



THE EABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A. 87 

in the schools of the learned, into the market of 
humanity, and has communicated that 'Kingdom 
of Heaven ' of which the Talmud is full from the 
first page to the last, to the herd, to the lepers/' ^ 

We seek now not the differences, but the points 
of contact between the two religions, and w^e find 
them to be numerous and vital. And who will 
wonder at it who remembers that the New Testa- 
ment was written, as Lightfoot puts it, ''among 
Jews, by Jews, for Jews." 

Lord Beaconsfield, in one of his earlier works, 
speaks of Christiauity as the developed religion of 
the ancient Israelites, and of Judaism as that re- 
ligion suddenly arrested in its growth and petrified. 
A truer description would be that Judaism and 
Christianity are alike evolutions difi'erentiated from 
one common stock, that stock being the conceptions 
and practices held by the remarkable race that 
lived and ruled in Palestine from the time of Moses 
to the Common Era, a period of about 1400 years. 

It is not for us here to discuss the origin of these 
coiiceptioDS and practices. On this point there will 
always be, as there always has been, two opinions 
wide apart as the poles. The critical student will 
seek their source in the religious system of the 
ancient Egyptians, in the travelled experience and 

1 Deutsch's Literary Eemains, page 27. 



88 THE JEWISH FAITH. 

ripe sagacity of Israers leader, in the attempts to 
explain the phenomena of Nature and the cere- 
monies arising therefrom, which, following the 
same laws of thought, are so strikingly similar in 
early races of widely different types and locales. 
While the pious Jew and the devout Christian will 
be content with the all-sufficient explanation, that 
these conceptions and practices were divinely com- 
municated to the inspired legislator of the Israel- 
itish people. 

Waiving then the question of their origin, let us 
seek to draw a faithful picture of those principles 
and institutions which formed the foundation alike 
of Christianity and modern Judaism. 

First and foremost among these principles is the 
conception of the Deity, and of His relations to all 
besides Him. 

The God of Israel is more than the God of gods, 
in the sense that He is greater than the deities 
worshipped by other nations ; He is sole God, all 
others are idols, '^ with eyes that see not and ears 
that hear not" — nothings — powerless to help their 
most devoted worshippers. Self-Existent and Eter- 
nal (as exhibited in His name Jehovah, or Jahveh, 
from the Hebrew, ''to be"). He is Creator of the 
universe and of man. But power is the least 
of His attributes. He is scrupulously just, iji- 



THE RABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A. 89 

finitely good, tenderly merciful ; patiently bearing 
sin, that the sinner may repent, but punishing the 
persistent sinner, and accepting no ransom except 
the ransom of remorse and return to right-doing. 
He is absolutely spiritual, free from corporeality 
and all its attendant defects. And He is One of a 
Unity rigorously severe, ^' Hear, Israel ! the Lord 
thy God, the Lord is One " (Deut. vi. 4). 

It is worthy of note here, how the derived re- 
ligions — modern Judaism and Christianity — while 
agreeing in adopting en hloc these ancient concep- 
tions of the Deity, have diverged in the develop- 
ment of these principles, the former in the direction 
of severity, the latter in the direction of laxity. 

The Israelite in Canaan was ever prone to make 
material representations of the Supreme — the Jeiv 
throughout the world will sufier no sculptured 
figure in his synagogue, nor even pictorial form, to 
disturb his profound sense of the spirituality of 
the Being he worships; but the Christian con- 
ceives the Deity as having been for years incar- 
nated in a human creature. 

The ancient Israelite, though his prophets hurled 
ridicule and invective against the notion, thought 
that the death of the animal he sacrificed expiated 
his sin and saved his life — the modern Jew, on 
the great Day of Atonement, proclaims that only 



90 THE JEWISH FAITH. 

prayer, good deeds, and repentance, can revoke the 
decree pronounced on the sinner; the Christian 
hopes and believes that the sufferings and death of 
Jesus atone his guilt and secure his salvation. 

Finally, the Israelites of Palestine, despite tlie 
terrible penalties that instantly followed it, fell 
again and again under the fascination of idolatry. 
The watchword of Judaism at the present day is 
the Unity of God ; the first words of prayer the 
Jewish child learns to utter, the last words of 
prayer that fall on the ears of the Jew at the 
moment of death, are the words already quoted : 
*' Hear, Israel ! the Lord our God, the Lord is 
One ; '' while Christianity adores a holy trinity, 
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. 

To resume — The God of Israel, the Creator of all, 
is the Father of all. All nations are His, and all 
are dear to Him. He took Israel as His chosen 
people, not in the sense that He would pet and 
favour them at the expense of other nations, or 
that He would permit them to indulge with im- 
punity in vice and sin, but in the sense that He 
took them to do a great work, to perform a service 
on which He set great value, viz, that they should 
be '' His kingdom of priests," tea<*.hers to the world 
of His truth and worship. Thus God's selection of 
Israel was an evidence of His universal love. Nor 



THE RABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A. 91 

was man only the object of His affectionate regard 
— He looked with consideration on the lower pro- 
ductions of His creative power. True, He gave 
over all other livino; creatures to man for his use 
and benefit, but man was not to abuse his power. 
He might slaughter animals for food, but he was to 
inflict no unnecessary pain upon them ; he might 
employ them in labour, but he might not overwork 
them, their burdens were not to be made too heavy, 
and tbey too were to rest on the holy Sabbath-day. 
Their feelings, so to speak, were to be respected : 
"Thou sbalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth 
out the corn " (Deut. xxv. 4). The dumb creature 
was not to be tantalised by the sight of the dainty 
on which he was working while he was prevented 
from taking a mouthful. 

The God of Israel is pure and holy, and His 
people must become distinguished by the same 
qualities. They were to practise a morality which 
would do honour to the most advanced race of the 
nineteenth century, and which formed a marked 
contrast to the lawlessness and licentiousness pre- 
valent alike among the Egyptians and Canaanites. 

The relations between the sexes were to be 
characterised by refinement and mutual fidelity. 
All incestuous connections were to be avoided ; the 
seducer was to marry his victim by a union that no 



92 THE JEWISH FAITH. 

divorce could dissolve (Deut. xxii. 29) ; adultery 
was to be purged by the death of the guilty ones 
(Deut. xxii. 22). And the purity acquired by a 
lofty morality was to be maintained by careful 
separation from all that could defile the body or 
disturb the mind ; hence, probably, the laws con- 
ceruing Levitical purity and dietary laws. 

The relations between man and man were to be 
marked by strictest justice and tenderest love. 
"Wrong should not be committed, either by act 
(sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments), or by 
w^ord (ninth), or even by thought (tenth). And 
wrong inflicted should not be revenged, or even 
borne in mind (Lev. xix. 18). 

Judaism and Christianity have alike inherited 
these noble conceptions of human relations, but 
Judaism has emphasised justice as the fundamental 
virtue, while Christianity identifies itself with love. 
The modern Jewish term for philanthropy, alms- 
giving, is ^il^'^ ''justice," "righteousness," while 
the virtue constantly joined to the adjective 
Christian is charity — "Christian charity." But 
"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Lev. 
xix. 18) is still a precept acknowledged and largely 
obeyed by Jews as well as Christians. 

The God of Israel, Creator and Sustainer, in 
every way the Benefactor of His people, was to be 



THE RABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A. 93 

regarded by them with reverence and affection, 
was to be obeyed and worshipped. Days were to 
be observed holy to Him — the Sabbath, as their 
testimony to His miglity and beneficent work in 
creation ; the Festivals and the Sabbath, too, as 
their testimony to His mighty and beneficent work 
in the deliverance from Egypt, the giving of the 
Law, tbe protection of His people in the wilderness, 
and in presenting, year by year, His gracious gift 
of the earth's products. Worship was to be mani- 
fested mainly in the one form known to the ancient 
world, the presentation of offerings. But. it is to 
be noted that sacrifices for sins to God were to bo 
preceded by confession (Lev. xvi. 21), for sins to 
man by restitution (Lev. v. 23); thank-ofi'erings 
were to be accompanied by a declaration of God's 
goodness and of the gratitude of the worshipper 
(Deut. xxvi. i-ii), while the whole institution of 
sacrifices is introduced in such a way as represents 
it rather as regulating an existing practice than as 
establishing it as God's chosen form of service (Lev. 
i. 2). Thus the prophet Jeremiah (vii. 22) says: 
*' For I spake not unto your fathers nor commanded 
them in the day that I brought them out of the 
land of Egypt concerning burnt-offerings and sacri- 
fices.'' And all the prophets and psalmists speak 
of them as being of little value in God's eyes. 



94 THE JEWISH FAITH. 

One further element of the ancient religion of 
Israel remains to be considered — the place that the 
thought of eternity held in it. It is generally 
asserted that existence after death, with all tlie 
ideas connected with it, was either unknown or 
denied in Mosaism. This assertion I venture em- 
phatically to contradict. True, the rewards pro- 
mised to good deeds, the punishments threatened 
against crimes, are all temporal, terrestrial. There 
is no mention of happiness or misery beyond the 
grave, but good reasons may be assigned for this 
reticence. Moses, in speaking to the people of the 
results of their conduct, speaks to them as a nation 
(Lev. xxvii. ; Deut. xxviii.), and nations have no 
existence in a future world as individuals have ; 
their whole lives are spent here ; here on earth 
they ^'eat the fruit of their doings;" here and here 
only they enjoy the reward of their virtues and 
suffer the penalty of their vices. 

Again, the condition of the nation of Israel was 
to be an illustration to all the world of the effects 
of righteousness and sin. Their worldly prosperity, 
their power and happiness, were to encourage other 
nations to godliness. Their disasters, their defeat, 
and their misery, were to deter other nations from 
falling into their backslidings. Hence all stress 
was laid on the immediate results of their actions. 



THE RABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A. 95 

Finally, the promise of future bliss, the threat of 
future wretcheduess, is a terrible weapon whea 
wielded by an unscrupulous priesthood. Eesearches 
into Egyptian history have shown how" large a space 
the doctrine of immortality held in the cult of the 
ancient inhabitants of the Nile Valley, and what 
enormous power was usurped in consequence by 
the priestly caste. Eoman Catholicism^ in modern 
days furnishes another illustration of the same 
abuse. Dying men were terrified into bequeathing 
vast sums and large estates to the Church. Thus 
the clergy grew rich and powerful, while families 
were despoiled and the State impoverished. But 
the priests of Israel were to flourish with the pro- 
sperity of their people, not to fatten on their 
degradation and dependence. They were to hold 
no land, but to live on the off'erings of those to 
whom they ministered. 

For these reasons no distinct declaration is made 
concerning existence after death. But it is a mis- 
take to imagine that no allusion is made to such 
an existence. 

There is the injunction (Deut. xviii. ii) forbid- 
ding enquiring of the dead. 

The term for death is ''being gathered unto one's 

^ Compare Beniscli's Judaism Surveyed, p. 38. 



96 THE JEWISH FAITH. 

fathers," implying the thought of re-union of loved 
and loving ones after death. 

God, forbidding to Noah and his sons murder 
and suicide, strengthens his prohibitions by the 
words : ''Your blood of your souls will I require'' 
(Gen. ix. 5) ; w^iile in other books of the Bible the 
allusions to another state of existence are neither 
few nor obscure. 

Thus briefly and imperfectly (for the subject 
demands a volume rather than a magazine article) 
have I sketched the ideas and practices which 
formed the religion of the nation rescued from 
Egypt and settled in Canaan, a religion that may 
rightly be named after him who took so large a 
share in the establishment of the nation — Mosaism. 

Let us now proceed to enquire what modifications 
resulted from the terrible vicissitudes the people of 
Israel experienced — their repeated defeats and final 
overthrow as an independent nation, the destruc- 
tion of their Temple, the loss of their country, their 
dispersion throughout the world, their persecution 
on every side, and lastly their re-admission into 
the ranks of humanity, a beneficent movement 
commenced not a century ago, and still very far 
from being universally accomplished. 

I. From Babylon there returned to the land of 
Judah, with Ezra, a remnant poor in number and 



THE RABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A. 97 

in influence, but rich in religious zeal. The nation 
of Israel had passed through a fiery furnace ; it 
came forth terribly reduced but greatly purified. 
We hear never again of idol worship in connection 
with Israel. Henceforth their belief in God's Unity, 
in God's Spirituality, reigns supreme. 

Another characteristic of the restored nation, was 
an anxious desire to know and to perform all tlie 
institutions of the Law. There are passages scat- 
tered throughout the historical books which would 
lead us to suppose that, during the times of the 
Judges and the Kings, some of the most important 
laws were ig-nored or neo'lected. The orreat Festi- 

o. o o 

vals seem not to have been regularly observed. We 
know (2 Cbron. xxxvi. 21) that the Sabbatical year 
was not kept as a period of rest for the land. 
During the Babylonian exile, of necessity the insti- 
tution of sacrifices had fallen into desuetude. 

Now began an earnest investigation, an almost 
feverish activity, to know the requirements of the 
Law in their entirety. All that remained of the 
ancient literature was sought out and put together, 
and gradually the Canon was formed. The Penta- 
teuch was studied with an ardour not to be satiated. 
Believed to be inspired, it was thought that every 
word, letter, and point, had secret meanings, which 
would reveal themselves to the diligent student. 



98 THE JEWISH FAITH. 

The memories of the aged were racked for details 
as to how institutions had been observed in olden 
times. The recollections of scholars were sought 
for as to the teachings of their departed instructors. 
And thus there grew up a mass of material, consist- 
ing of traditions and the results of original investi- 
gation, which afterwards became arranged as Mishna 
and Gemara, together forming the Talmud. 

2. Thus centuries passed, during which the ten- 
dency became more and more pronounced to revive 
with increasing rigour and minuteness every insti- 
tution of ancient Mosaisra. A political crisis which 
seemed likely to arrest and subvert this tendency, 
did in the sequel only expedite and intensify it. 
The nation fell under the Grecian yoke, and a class 
— the governing class too — attracted by a learning, 
luxury, and refinement hitherto unknown to them, 
attracted too by the sensuous joys it held out to 
them— a class including even the High Priest— was 
ready to abandon the ancestral faith, and to adopt 
that of their conquerors. For imperial reasons in 
connection with his projected vengeance on Rome, 
Antiochus encournged this disposition, and even 
attempted by savage enactments to drive the entire 
nation to follow their aristocratic leaders. But 
persecution generally produces results exactly 
opposite to those aimed at by it, and the Mac- 



THE RABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A. 99 

cabean uprisini^' resulted not only in the throwing 
off of the Grecian yoke, bat in the iiiciecise of 
attachment to the national religion and to those 
distinctive rites the Greeks had specially striven to 
efface. 

Thus grew up Pharisaism, generally regarded as 
s\nonvmous with all that W' as base, narrow-minded, 
and hypocritical, but w^hich in truth was genuine 
religious ardour expressing itself in externals. 
Unfortunately externals alone are visible and 
imitable to the multitude, the spirit that animates 
and dignifies them is not so apparent nor so readily 
adopted. 

At this epoch there arose the Great Teacher 
wh)se influence has so profoundly affected the 
world. He moved in Judea, filled with noble 
aspirations, denouncing mere formalities, impaiient 
of all that fell short of His own high ideal. 
So far as I can perceive, His recorded words har- 
monise with what Isaiah, Jeremiah, or any Hebrew 
prophet taught concerning religion when they 
thundered against the follies or vices of their 
brethren. He lived and died an obedient son of 
Israel. Nor w^as His death the signal for the 
establishment of a new religion. His disciples, 
all born Jews, maintained Jewish institutions. It 
was not until forty years after, and then only under 



100 THE JEWISH FAITH. 

the ii]fluence of a vision (Acts x. 1 1-16), that Peter 
set aside the dietary laws. The Jewish Sabbath 
Avas long retained as the holy Day of Eest, and 
until the Gentiles in numbers gave ear to the 
preaching of the Apostles, the rite of circumcision 
was considered nn essential qualification for Chris- 
tianity, as it had been for Judaism. Indeed, it 
was Paul's preachitig that authorised such de- 
partures from Jewish practice as constituted the 
establishment of a new faith, and from an historical 
point of view, I am inclined to name Paul rather 
than Jesus as the founder of the Christian religion. 

During this period, and in the ages immedi- 
ately succeeding, important changes took place in 
Judaism. The doctrine of life after death became 
prominent — now as belief in the resurrection of the 
body on the Day of Judgment, now in the more 
refined form of belief in the immortality of the 
soul. The Pharisees held both beliefs, the Sad- 
ducces (the Conservative party in Judaism) denied 
the former and were disposed to keep the latter in 
the background, hence they were popularly believed 
to reject altogether belief in a future state. 

The development of the Messianic idea is another 
characteristic of this epoch. Every prophet had 
looked forward to a time when the fortunes of 
Israel should be triumphant, and the condition of 



THE RABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A. 101 

man generally one of perfect peace and happiness, 
and most of the Hebrew seers had united with this 
glorious future the renewed splendour of the House 
of David. In times of material prosperity, as the 
need and so the desire for this future was less felt, 
the Messianic idea receded to the background. In 
times of gloom and disaster, and in proportion to 
the hopelessness of the present outlook, the Mes- 
sianic idea became prominent, and its promises 
were passionately longed and prayed for. And to 
this day the Messianic idea is one of the most im- 
portant and pregnant in Judaism, holding a chief 
place in its creed, and greatly influencing its ritual 
in every quarter of the globe — with this difi'ereuce, 
that where the Jewish people are oppressed and 
trodden down, where their position is poor and 
degraded, there its special and personal features 
are most considered, there the Messiah is the 
earthly prince that will bring back Israel to 
Palestine, once more a great and powerful nation. 
Where the Jewish people possess religious liberty 
and civil rights, where they can enjoy without 
molestation the fruits of their labours, and find a 
fair field for the exercise of their talents, there the 
grander, the universal characteristics of the Mes- 
sianic age are more res^arded, and the cominof of 
the Messiah means there the advent of the happy 



102 THE JEWISH FAITH. 

time when sin and want, war and misery, ignorance 
and superstition shall be no more. 

One last and, perhaps, greatest change has to be 
considered, the change in the form of worship from 
sacrifice to prayer. While the second Temple still 
existed, certain prayers accompanied the sacrificial 
rites ; but when the Temple was razed to the 
ground, and the Jewish people were cast forth to 
wander over the world, when it Avas no longer 
possible to present the prescribed offerings, then 
prayer became the only possible means whereby 
the Supreme could be publicly adored. Devotional 
compositions were prepared to be recited at the 
hours when the sacrifices had been off*ered. These 
compositions have increased as the ages have rolled 
on, but they are still grouped into services cor- 
responding with the sacrifices offered daily and on 
special occasions. 

Thus Judaism has maintained itself side by side 
with what, in connection with it, is often termed 
the daughter religion, but which, perhaps, should 
more correctly be termed its sister religion — 
Christianity ; the one struggling for dear life 
against the suspicion and hate of the world, the 
other allied with greatness and power ; once rivals, 
long foes, now and henceforth, it is to be hoped, 
friends and fellow- workers, differing in very in> 



THE KABBI G. J. EMANUEL, B.A. 103 

portant principles and practices, but holding in 
common other principles of priceless worth, pro- 
claimiDg together God as the Father of all His 
children, striving together, though by difiereut 
methods, to bring all men to the knowledge and 
worship of the Most High. 



ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY. 



VII. 



By Sir WILLIAM MUIK, Principal op Edinburgh 
University. 

"DEFORE proceeding to compare the teaching of 

Islam with that of the Gospel, one or two 

things may be mentioned on its relation to Judaism. 

Built up as the religion was of materials borrowed 
mainly from the Jews, we should not be surprised at 
its assimilating more with the Mosaic Dispensation 
than with the Gospel, from which comparatively 
little was taken. Yet even from Judaism the 
divergence is very wide. 

The Jews lived in constant anticipation of a 
future prophet and of a kingdom to come. Ma- 
homet, on the other hand, announced himself the 
last of the prophets. As such, he is at once the 
Founder and the Finisher of the faith. The Jewish 
sentiment is expectation; the Moslem that of con- 
summation. It was from Rabbinical sources, sacred 
and profane, that Mahomet took the greater part of 



PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM MUIR. 105 

his system, both doctrinal and ritualistic. Having 
taken what he wanted, he then brushed his au- 
thorities all aside. Nominally the prophets and 
their writings still remain objects of belief, but 
practically they are banished from sight, and no- 
where to be found. The new revelation — the 
Coran and the Prophet's dicta — become thus the 
sole depository of Divine teaching. Professing to 
recognise ''the previous Scriptures,'' Jewish and 
Christian, as inspired of God, — " a Light and Guide 
unto mankind " — Mahomet cast tbem all away, and 
they are to his followers practically as if they never 
had been. Thus the new Theology, though in 
theory a continuation of the Jewish and Christian 
Dispensations, took an altogether fresh point of 
departure. Unlike both the Jewish and Christian 
systems, it is founded exclusively on a single 
book, and on the authority and teaching of a 
single man. 

In another matter, — that, namely, of religious 
w^arfare, — -there might have been expected some 
consent of opinion between Judaism and Islam. 
In point of fact, there is none whatever. With the 
Israelites the command to fight had reference to the 
promised land from which alone the heathen were 
to be driven out ; that accomplished, the command 
ceased and determined. Tlie idea of fighting for 



106 ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

tlie propagation of the law of Moses was unknown, 
either in the day of Joshua or at nny subsequent 
era in Jewish history. With the Moslems, on tlie 
contrary, the propagation of IsLim was the grand 
motive for drawing the sword. The command 
(though meant at first, it may be, only for Arabia) 
soon extended in ever-widening circles to the whole 
world. In one respect, indeed, the Moslem prin- 
ciple may seem more merciful than the Jewish ; for 
the Arabian warriors were bidden first to call upon 
the nations to embrace Islam ; and only on the 
failure of these to comply, were they to fight 
a(]:ainst them. Still, the eff*ect on the national 
sentiment of the two peoples was as diff'erent as it 
possibly could be. If with the Jews there was the 
maxim. Hate thine enemy, it was in a sense com- 
mon throuo;hout the world, and never led to war- 
fare for the aggrandisement of their religion. The 
command passed away with the occasion, and left 
none of its colouring behind.^ With the Mahome- 
tans it ingrained itself as a leading element of their 
creed, and an abiding sentiment of national life. 

1 See Isaac Taylor in his Bpirit of the Hebrew Poetry. "The 
Hebrew tribes did indeed enact the extermination of the Canaan- 
itish races (so far as this was done), but the work of slaughter, done 
as it was, did not settle itself down in the national temper and 
habits, so as to show itself in the people as a permanent dispo- 
eition." p. 132. 



PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM MUIR. 107 

With them ^^ warrino; in the waxs of the Lord '' 
was, and so remains, the highest kind of religious 
merit, brinoino- with it also the material reward of 
captive maids and riches upon earth, and for those 
falling on the batt'efield, special blessedness with 
houris in the w^orld to come. The soul of the 
Moslem is thus inflamed at once with the fire of 
fanaticism and the lust of plunder — sentiments 
with which the Jewish command failed to inspire 
the children of the conquerors of the Holy Land. 

Points, moreover, of contrast with the Christian 
faith, both in doctrine, ritual and morals, meet us 
at every turn. And first as to Doctrine. 

There is in Islam no mediator between God and 
man. The Deity, as conceived in the sense of 
severe unity, is approached immediately and di- 
rectly. He is known as the ju.<t and sovereign 
Euler of the Universe, whose special providence 
extends to the minutest concerns on earth, and who 
is the Hearer of prayer and the Judge of men and 
angels ; — but not as the Christian knows Him, ''the 
Father in heaven ; '' — fear thus with the Moslem 
worshipper rather than love predominating. Jcsus 
is known historically as a Pro[)het ; but He did not 
die; He w^as taken up into heaven. Sin may be 
forgiven ; but it is so by the mere act of God — 
not for any merit s sake of a Kedeemcr. And the 



108 ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit is ignored 
altogether. Islam has not anything to put in 
place of these grand influences of grace and love 
by which the Christian's life is moulded and his 
heart constrained. 

Next as to CeremoniaL Here everything is laid 
down by rule, and hence the tendency to mechani- 
cal performance. The round of ritual is prescribed 
and stereotN'ped. Prayer is divinely appointed to 
be said, with fixed rule of prostration and of genu- 
flexion, at five stated periods of the day. One 
month for fasting every year is obligatory upon all, 
and is observed with sliigular rigour, day by day, 
from early dawn to sunset. The discipline is un- 
doubtedly a severe exercise of self-denial, and of 
devotion to the faith ; but its virtue is much neu- 
tralised by the indulgence allowed from sunset 
again till dawn of day, during which period re- 
striction of every kind is withdrawn. Of similar 
tendency is the ordinance of Pilgrimage to Mecca 
and the neighbouring holy places — the tour termi- 
nated by the slaying of victims (the Bairam 
festival of the Turks), — a sacrificial custom like 
that of the Jews, but shorn of its Mosaic lesson. 
This pilgrimage is enjoined on all from every land 
who are possessed of the means to enter on it. All 
these solemnities are observed as works of merit iu 



PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM MUIR. 109 

themselves, and also, no doubt, by many as means 
of religious elevation and improvement ; but the 
tendency with the great mass of the Moslem world 
is towards the former end alone. Prayer, fasting, 
and pilgrimage, are services working out the salva- 
tion of the worshipper. No true believer can be 
lost, but if his bad deeds outweigh the good he 
must expiate the same in the life to come. On the 
other hand, heaven is drawn in the Goran in colour- 
ing of the most worldly and material hues. There 
are black-eyed virgins for wives, rich couches and 
carpets, fountains and cup-bearers of wine that 
exhilarates without inebriating — pictures these the 
sensuous tendencies of which must be to deaden 
the spiritual aspirations of the worshipper. 

We turn now to the moral and social aspects of 
Islam. The relations established by the Coran 
between the sexes, wull not compare with those of 
the Pentateuch, much less of the Gospel. Besides 
the privilege of having four free wives at a time, 
and of having as concubines any number of slaves 
he likes, the Moslem husband has by Divine law 
the power of divorcing the former at any moment 
and without any reason assigned. He is thus at 
liberty to ^Wary" even his married wives at his 
mere caprice and fancy. Social and domestic influ- 
ences happily correct largely the abuse of this 



110 ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

power. Nevertheless, that such is the license given 
by their Scripture cannot but have a deteriorat- 
ing effect on the moral habitude of the peo[)le. 
Even in Mecca, for example, the citadel of the 
faith, there is euouorh to show the scandalous ebb 
to which in some quarters, without any transgres- 
sion of the law, the sacred institution of marriage 
has fallen. 

The jealous temperament of the Prophet pro- 
vided restrictions on the liberty of women, not 
uncongenial to his followers, but materially affect- 
ing the position of the sex. They may be chastised, 
and they may be shut up in seclusion. They are 
forbidden to appear abroad without the veil, 
and stringent conditions are enjoined as to the 
admission into their rooms of any but the nearest 
relatives. All these depressing and unfriendly 
influences notwithstanding, woman, no doubt, re- 
tains by virtue of the remedial power of domestic 
life, a dominant, though it may be an uncertain, 
position w^ithin the harem or zenana ; but beyond 
its bounds her influence is well-nigh unknown. 
She is shut out from all the walks of outer life, 
and from all those sweet offices of mercy and phil- 
anthropy to which — but for the barrier of the 
Moslem revelation — she might, like her Jewish 
and Christian sisters, devote her life. 



PRINCIPAL Sm WILLIAM MUIR. Ill 

Nor is there hope of any effective amelioration. 
Tlie law of the Coran is not, like the wide and 
adaptive inculcations of the Gospel, fitted for all 
time and for every onward movement of mankind. 
Its rule is hard and fast, a set of rigid ordinances 
incapable of change and relaxation. And thus, so 
long as the Coran prevails, woman remains secluded 
— her soft and purifying power lost upon the other 
sex outside the walls of the harem. It is the same 
with Slavery, the curse of Moslem lands. It can- 
not be eliminated from the law which the Mussul- 
man holds to be Divine ; it must continue to hold 
its place as an institution, casting a blight upon 
the proud slave-holder sadder even than on the 
poor victim of his pleasure. 

It remains only now to notice the contrast to the 
teaching of the Gospel in the sphere of politics — 
namely, in the unity of the secular and spiritual 
elements forming the Moslem theory of government. 
Church and state are integrally one. The head of 
the state is head also of the faith ; and the fusion 
runs throughout. The functions are synonymous. 
With the armies of Islam, for instance, which over- 
ran the world, the Ameer, or chief commander, as 
such, led also the prayers of his force. The spiritual 
function was badge also of secular and military 
supremacy. In theory Islam is a theocracy, origin- 



112 ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

ating in the Caliphate, or succession from the 
Prophet ; and when the Caliphate passed away, 
breaking np into separate polities, the head of each 
of which is at once its secular and its ecclesiastical 
ruler. The result of sucli a system is that the cbief 
must by necessity be absolute sovereign — a desj^ot 
iu the proper sense of the term. His power is only 
limited by the patience of the people, though also 
in a manner by the Futwas (theological and legal 
deliverances) of the Ulema and Doctors, which as 
Vicegerent of the Prophet the sovereign is bound 
to follow. The outcome of all this is that freedom, 
in the political sense of the word, is unknown. 
Liberal institutions, in which the peo})le can take 
their share, and through which they may give 
effect to their collective wish, are altoorether foreiijn 
to the genius of Islam, and under the regime of the 
Coran beyond the scope of expectation. 

In fine, the fatal demerit of Islam, viewed in its 
social and political aspect, is that, tied and en- 
crusted round as it is by the text of the Coran, 
progress and adaptation to varying circumstance 
are unattainable. Institutions based on the sanction 
of a revelation h(M to be divinely given are un- 
alterable ; they present a bar impassable to social 
and political amelioration. Elsewhere the world 
may advance ; Islam, with its polity and law, as 



PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM MUIR. 113 

Mahomet left them twelve centuries ago, remains 
the same. 

It is hardly necessary to point out the difFcrence 
of Christian teaching in respect of the various 
points enumerated above. They will, no doubt, 
have suggested themselves to the reader who may 
have been kindly giving his attention as he went 
along. For example, the Gospel, though holding 
the wife subject to the husband, has not the less 
implanted principles which now culminate in the 
elevation of the sex to a position of virtual equality. 
The social rules of the Bible possess a plastic virtue 
suitable for every race and clime and time. In place 
of the veil and restrictions on social intercourse, it 
simply eujoins modest apparel and ^'chaste conver- 
sation.'' And so, while altogether shut out from 
her legitimate iufluence on Moslem society, woman 
takes her place with us in all the walks of mercy 
and benevolence. She sheds the light and grace 
upon the world ^which the female sex alone can 
give, and the absence of which keeps Moslem life 
outside the harem austere and dark. 

Not less marked is the contrast to the political 
environments of Islam. The doctrine of a common 
Father in heaven has opened the way to universal 
freedom. The captive, as ''a brother beloved," at 
last is set at liberty ; while the ordinance of slavery 



114 ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

must prevail so long as the scripture of Mahomet is 
law. So also with political progress. Caesar and 
the Chui'ch are free to go each its own way, and 
thus advance is possible on either side. The Gospel 
sheds its approval on every step of moral and social 
progress, if it do not indeed actually point out the 
way thereto. 

And finally, instead of the cold lesson of morality 
which is all that Islam offers, with its fixed round 
of prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage, we have the 
warm and constraining; influences of a faith and 
love which the personal sacrifice of a Eedeemer 
alone can give ; — 

" In this was manifested the love of God toward 
us, because that God sent His only begotten Son 
into the world, that we might live throug'h Him. 

" Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that 
He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation 
for our sins. 

''Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to 
love one another.'' ^ 

In this consists the sovereio:n virtue of the 
Gospel. We should search in vain for like virtue 
anywhere in the Goran or in the teaching of 
Mahomet. 

1 1 John iv. 9-11, 



BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 



VIIL 



T. "W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D., Barrister-at-Law, A^'D 
Author of *' Buddhism," "The Hibbert Lectures," i88i, 

ETC. 

ANE of tbe principal advantages of the great pro- 
gress made iu recent years in our knowledge 
of Buddhism is the opportunity whicli it affords 
for the comparison of our own civilisation with one 
which is altogether independent of it. To compare 
Biblical Theology with Mohammedanism is to com- 
pare it with a weak and modern system, the best 
parts of which are an inadequate and inaccurate 
reproduction, and that not immediately, but at 
second hand, from Biblical Theology itself. And 
to compare it with the popular religions, or philo- 
sophical systems of Greece and Eome, is to compare 
it with modes of thought which are very intimately 
connected, both by action and reaction, with itself. 
There has been, it is true, no little wild talk about 
the borrowings of Christianity from Buddhism. 



116 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIAN iTY. 

But there Ijas not as yet been discovered the 
slightest scintilla of evidence for any historical 
connection between the two. And the more we 
know about Buddhism the more clearly does it 
appear that tlie supposed resembhiiices are either 
due to passages iu Buddhist books, which are post- 
Christian in date, or are only of the most superficial 
character. The fact is, that Buddhism is the most 
different from Christianity of all the great religions. 
Its fundamental conceptions are not only distinct 
from, but are in absolute contradiction to those of 
the Bible. And it is precisely on that account that 
the study of Buddhism is by far more instructive 
and interesting, from the comparative point of 
view, than any other of the systems that have 
been dealt with in this Symposium. 

Many streams unite to form the religious con- 
ceptions of India. The main stream is that of 
Aryan thought, into which, from a very early date, 
there continually flowed not a few tributaries from 
the ideas of the non-Aryan peoples whom the 
Aryans gradually overcame in their progress down 
the valley of the Ganges. It would be impossible, 
within the limits of this short paper, to attempt to 
differentiate, in any detail, between these various 
constituents of Hinduism as it existed at the time 
of the rise of Buddhism, five hundred years before 



T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., PH.D. 117 

the birth of Christ. But the evolution of theology- 
had followed among the Indian Aryans very much 
the same lines as it had followed among the Greeks, 
and had reached, at the time of which we speak, 
much the same result as had been reached at the 
same time by the Aryans in Europe. 

Ethics and theology were as yet distinct. All 
mysteries in Nature were explained by the action 
of spirits. Among the innumerable spirits on the 
earth and in the sky, a few, the personifications of 
the more striking natural events, had been raised 
to the rank of great gods. And the pantheistic 
philosophers had already dimly supposed a unity 
behind the multiplicity of tliese spiritual hypo- 
theses, and had postulated a first cause, a god 
whom they called Brahma, as the one being of 
whom all other spirits, and all men, and animals, 
and things, w^ere but the temporary and changing 
forms. With these speculations, and even with 
the great gods, the mass of the people did not much 
concern themselves. They were great believers in 
all kinds of lucky signs and dreams and omens. 
They worshipped all kinds of local or tribal gods 
with the object of averting misfortune or gaining 
wealth. They believed in the existence of spirits 
or souls inside their own bodies, and in a kind of 
shadowy future life for those souls after their bodies 



118 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

had died. And such existence would be liappy or 
tlie reverse, not so much in consequence of their 
conduct in life, as in consequence of certain cere- 
monies being performed or not at the time of their 
deatli. 

Meanwhile, side by side with these theological or 
spiritual ideas, but quite independent of them, there 
had been gradually forming a set of elementary 
ethical ideas — life, except that of enemies, or of 
animals required for food, was not to be taken. 
There were limitations as regards marriage, and 
the chastity of any woman under the protection of 
other men was carefully respected. 'J'he rights of 
individual property had been already acknowledged, 
and there was an elaborate code of customary rules 
with regard to communal property. Great stress 
was laid on reverence to elders, on etiquette, and 
on ceremonial behaviour. Gratitude, kindness, 
generosity, and of course bravery, were held in 
high esteem. And the caste system, already in 
full vogue, involved a number of carefully balanced 
rights and duties. 

The next stage in the ordinary course of things 
would have been for some reformer to amalo-amate 
the results of ethical and of theolooical thouijht 
into a new pantheistic or theistic religion — religion, 
that is, in the modern sense, a guide not only to 



T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., PH.D. 119 

belief about spirits, but also to right conduct. The 
peculiarity of Gotama's reform lay in this : tbat he 
ignored and despised the whole of the theology, 
and after elaboratiug, refining, and enlarging the 
ethics, made them alone the basis of a new system 
entirely independent of all the previous spirit 
hypotheses. 

He considered, aud deliberately condemned as 
vague speculation — not only useless but inimical to 
righteousness of life — the idea of a personal God as 
the first cause and immanent reality of all things. 
He considered, and deliberately condemned as vain 
speculation — injurious to character or to any 
growth in goodness — the idea of a soul as the 
eternal substratum of the individual life of men. 
He considereil, and deliberately condemned as vain, 
immoral, and weak, the prevalent idea that the 
salvation of the soul could be ultimately attained 
by a happy life in heaven. It would be superfluous 
to compare such conclusions with Biblical Theology. 
May we not rather ask whether it would be possible 
to formulate any system which should be in more 
absolute and categorical contradiction to all the 
bases of Christian belief? 

The further question now arises whether the 
ethics of the Buddhist scriptures, the positive 
aspects of Gotaina's teaching, stand in the same 



120 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

violent contrast to Christian ethics as the Buddhist 
views of God and the soul do to Biblical Theology ? 
Partly yes and partly no. The Buddhist theory 
distinguishes the morality of the ordinary uncon- 
verted man from that of the converted man, the 
sotd-panno, who has entered on the excellent way. 
With regard to the former the resemblances are 
sometimes, no doubt, very close. But they are 
also, for the purposes of our present enquiry, very 
unimportant. It is inaccurate to quote such 
resemblances as evidence of any anticipation of 
Christian by Buddhist ethics. They have in 
reality very little to do either with the one or 
with the other. And Buddhist ethics, to be rightly 
understood or judged, must be considered from 
the point of view of the higher morality of the 
converted mnn. 

The Buddhist salvation was held to consist in a 
certain state of mind to be gained and enjoyed in 
this present life, and not extending beyond the 
grave. This state of mind is occasionally in the 
Buddhist books called Nirvdna, or "the going 
out/' and meaning the going out in the heart of 
the three fires of lust, ill-will, and foolishness. 
This name of the blissful state 1 refer to first as it 
is the one exclusively used in English works on the 
subject of Buddhism. But in the Buddhist books 



T. W. KHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., PH.D. 121 

it is only one out of many epithets of the perfect 
rest of Arabatslnp. Others are Freedom, Purity, 
Holiness, Bliss, Happiness, the End of Suffering, 
the Cessation of Craving, Peace, Calm, Tranquillity, 
the Other Shore, the Island of Eefuge, Emancipation, 
the Cessation (of human passion), the Secure, the 
Cave, the Supreme, the Transcendent, the Formless, 
the Truth, the Imperishable, the Infinite, Ambrosia, 
the Immaterial, the Abstract, the Uncreated, the 
Unseen, the Inefiable, the Sorrowless, Detachment, 
the Fruit (of the path of Arahatship), and many 
others. Each of these terms is used quite absolutely, 
without any qualifying expression, and many of 
them would require a commentary to make their 
full connotation plain. Some of them are used 
quite as frequently as that epithet of '^the going 
out," which has been selected by European writers, 
and the Pali words for them would be quite as 
accurate a name for the Buddhist ideal state. 
More frequent than any is, however, the expression 
Arahatship, '^ the state of him who is worthy," and 
that word, therefore, is the one that will be used in 
the remainder of this papen 

Now Arahatship is best defined, both from the 
positive side and the negative, by an enumeration 
of the various things which are to be included or 
excluded by the state of mind of the Arahat. In 



122 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

the first place, he is one who has traversed the 
so-called Excellent Way, which consists of eight 
divisions or categories : — 

1. Eight Views — free from superstition or 
delusion. 

2. Eight Desires — such inclinations, aspirations, 
as lead a man to choose the right. 

3. Eight Speech — kindly, open, truthful. 

4. Eight Conduct — peaceful, honest, pure. 

K. Eio-ht Livelihood — bringino; hurt or dano-er to 
no living thing. 

6. Eight Effort — in self-training and in self- 
control. 

7. Eight Mindfulness — the ever active mind, 
watchful and alert. 

8. Eight Eapture — the ecstasy which follows 
an earnest contemplation of the deep mysteries 
of life. 

This division, due to Gotama himself, is supple- 
mented by another, also due to the founder of 
Buddhism, in which the Excellent Way is divided 
into four stages ; each of these stages consisting in 
the breaking of certain bonds or chains by which 
the unconverted are bound. 

In the first, the stage of Conversion, the disciple 
gets rid of delusions regarding the permanency and 
importance of his own individuality. The breaking 



T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., PH.D. 123 

of this bond is the entrance upon the excellent 
way. It is the breaking away from self, the self- 
renunciation, which is held to be the foundation of 
all righteousness. 

The next step (in the same stage) is the destruc- 
tion of Doubt. When the eyes of the disciple are 
open to the insignificance and the impermanency 
of his own being, he must not, therefore, give up 
hope, and think that all is lost. By faith in the 
victory already achieved by the great Arahat, the 
Buddha himself, over the powers of evil ; by faith 
in the efficacy of the excellent way pointed out by 
him for the destruction of sorrow, he must over- 
come all doubt, and proceed, full of assurance of his 
ultimate success (for those who have once entered 
the path can never lose it, can never fail), to the 
next step. 

This is the getting rid of the bond called '* Belief 
in the efficacy of rites and ceremonies, ascetic 
practices, and mere outward works of worldly 
morality.'' It is the perception of the only method 
by which the disciples can hope for salvation. The 
first part of it is a protest against the benefits sup- 
posed to result from the ritual prescribed by the 
Brahmins, and from all those ascetic practices 
which have been so popular in India. But it 
probably includes also in its condemnation, any 



124 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

worship in any manner of any spiritual power or 
being.^ The second part, based on the destruction 
above pointed out, is an inculcation of the necessity 
of ^^ inwardness/' of a real change of heart, and is 
the Buddhist analogue to the long vexed battle 
between faith and works so hotly waged between 
Christian writers. 

"When the disciple whose eyes have been opened 
has thus renounced self, is full of faith, and has 
grasped the right method to be followed in the 
struggle, his conversion is complete, and he is sure 
of attaining to Arahatship, either in his present, or 
in some future birth. 

The next two stages are entirely occupied with 
the struggle against the three deadly enemies of 
the religious life — Lust, Ill-will, and Dulness. I 
must call attention to the fact — it is the only bit 
of controversy that has been allowed to intrude 
upon our narrow space — that it is lust, and not 
desire, which is the chain or bond to be broken. 
It is a common blunder in English treatises on 
Buddhism that the Buddhist scriptures, or Gotama 
himself, inculcated the extinction of desire. There 

^ The worship of the "Great Being," the one god of Brahmin 
speculation, is expressly forbidden in the Brahma Jala Sulla, I., 26, 
among a list of vain ceremonies, including astrology and witchcraft ! 
And the reference there is not to the righteousness of the Arahat, 
but ouly to the lower morality of the Silas. 



T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., PH.D. 125 

is not one passage in the Buddhist books to support 
so absurd a contention. Lusts, craving, longing, 
excitement, greed, all that lies at the root of that 
unworthy scramble for wealth or power or social 
position so characteristic of the un-Christian life of 
modern Christian cities, is undoubtedly condemned 
in many passages ; and is even stated, under the 
frequent simile of burning thirst, to be the 
ultimate cause of all sorrow. But the cultivation 
of right desires is an essential part of Buddhist 
ethics. 

The destruction of the second of these three 
bonds. Ill-will, is to be brought about by the cul- 
tivation of the opposite quality of Love, and that 
not to men only, but to animals and gods. '' As a 
mother, even at the risk of her own life, protects 
her son, her only son, so let him (the Arahat) 
cultivate good-will without measure towards all 
beings : let him cultivate a heart of love that 
knows no measure, and that knows no stint, un- 
obstructed by any sense of differing or opposing 
interests, towards the whole world above, below, 
around ! " ^ When the disciple has reached the 
end cf this stnge of the excellent way he will 
attain to Arahatship in his next birth. Tliis is 
the only place found in the higher Buddhist ethics 

1 Sutta Nipata, I., 8, 7. 



126 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

for love to God ; and even then the words are not 
used in any Christian sense. ^'The Great Being '^ 
is only Brahmd, and the love is not the filial love 
of a father. 

By the third of this evil trio, Dulness, is not of 
course meant dulness in the modern sense, want of 
excitement, but dulness in a peculiar Buddhist 
sense, want of impressibility to higher things, that 
spiritual deadness to the higher life which would 
prevent the disciple from progressing in his struggle, 
in his journey along the excellent way. And with 
the complete victory over this ''dulness" the dis- 
ciple has reached the end of the first half of the 
path. 

The latter half is occupied with the breaking of 
bonds, considered, in Buddhist ethics, to be even 
more difiicult to get free from than the evil trio 
just explained. These new foes are, firstly, the 
desire for future life, either on earth or in heaven; 
and, secondly, the desire for future life in the 
immaterial worlds beyond. It is strange tl^at with 
this injunction on the very threshold of Buddhist 
ethics there should still be popular writers who 
describe the Buddhist ideal as an absorption into 
nothing. I very much doubt whether any man at 
any time or place can ever have held any such 
ideal. There were, no doubt, isolated Brahmin 



T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., PH.D. 127 

thinkers in the time of Gotama who desired a 
future life in an immaterial world. And this 
might possibly be described, but inaccurateh^, 
loosely, and inadequately, as an absorption into 
nothing. Now even any such desire is here ex- 
pressly declared to be, not only not a part of^ 
but incompatible with the Buddhist ideal life of 
Arahatship. 

The third and fourth of these tighter bonds are, 
like the first and second, closely allied. They are 
Pride and Self-righteousness, which are to be over- 
come by the cultivation of the opposite virtues of 
humility and reverence for others. And the last 
enemy to be conquered, the last bond to be broken, 
is Ignorance, considered, in Buddhist ethics, to be 
the most deadly obstacle to the attainment of 
religious perfection. This word, also, is here used 
in a technical sense. It was not simply ignorance 
of history, or science, or any worldly wisdom, but 
rather, ignorance of the Four Noble Truths, and 
other similar fundamental points in religious know- 
ledge and insight. 

I have gone thus far into detail regarding 
Arahatship, not only because it is the central and 
most fundamental part of Buddhist ethics, but 
because a knowledge of those details will enable 
any reader of this paper to understand at once and 



128 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

without any further discussion, precisely the degree 
in which Buddhist ethics do, and still more do not 
agree with Christian ethics. The conclusion may, 
I think, be summed up somewhat in this way. 

We find scattered throughout the Bible a number 
of passages describing the ideal character, or point- 
ing out mental or spiritual dispositions, qualities, 
which it should, on the one hand, include, and on 
the other hand, exclude. It is true that these 
statements are not systematised, and that diflferent 
writers, or occasionally the same writers in different 
passnges, seem to lay diflferent stre.^s on some one 
side rather than on some other side of the ideal 
Christian character. This is partly because of the 
importance attached rather to the spirit than the 
letter, partly because the necessary space is occu- 
pied with other matters, partly because of the way 
in which the Bible was formed. We find, in con- 
sequence, that the great fathers and leaders of the 
Christian Church do not always take precisely the 
same view of the Christian character. But the 
picture drawn in the sacred writings is very suf- 
ficiently clear as a whole, and the differences of 
interpretation either deal with minor points, or 
consist in the greater prominence given to some 
portion of the doctrine held after all, though in less 
degree, by opposing theologians. 



T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., PH.D. 129 

On comparing this ideal with the Badclbist 
Arahatship (or Nirvdna), we find a not inconsider- 
able number of what may fairly be called resem- 
blances, .but of what I think it would be more 
accurate to call points of contact. Some of these 
are in such elementary matters as truthfulness, 
honesty, chastity, kindliness. Others have relation 
to the deeper side of the religious life, and one or 
two of these are strano;e coincidences. The im- 
portance attached to conversion, to a change of 
heart, to self-renunciation, to inw-ardness, to faith, 
to humility, and to love, are of the essence of 
ethics. Such coincidences as that of the final 
perseverance of the saints, of the peace which 
passeth understanding, of the absolute conscious- 
ness of the victory won, of the position taken in 
the controversy as to faith and works, are striking. 
And the feeling of the New Testament as to 
w^ealth, and the feeling of many Christians as to 
preference, in the highest religious life of all, for 
the unmarried over the married life, might be 
matched with passages from the Buddhist scrip- 
tures. But a critical examination of any one of 
these resemblances would show that in no sino^le 
instance are the ideas identical. They are at m^st 
analogous. The words are never used in precisely 
the same sense. They are wrapped up with 



130 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

implications, connotations, which are always more 
or less present to the minds of the Buddhists who 
use them. The ideas themselves, therefore, ex- 
pressed in the words are not the same, and we 
have to deal, not with any real agreement, but only 
with points of contact. 

Another matter to which considerable importance 
is often attached (but which is really a question, 
neither of theology nor of ethics, but of literature), 
is that the terms of expression, or the similes em- 
ployed in the Buddhist texts, are sometimes 
strangely suggestive of other texts more familiar 
to us. Thus we find parables of the sower, of the 
mustard seed, and of the two mites, a set of very 
beautiful beatitudes,^ a section (or chapter) on the 
treasure laid up in the inward man which no thief 
can steal. We are told how it is bad actions and 
not the eating of so-called unclean foods, which 
defile a man, and how the wages of sin is death. 
There is a frequently recurring phrase, ^^in the 
spirit and not in the letter." Arahatship is ob- 
tained without money and without price. The 
Arahat is described as dead to the world, while at 
the same time he is not to hide his light, but so to 
let it shine forth that others may profit Of the 

1 One of tlie blessed states, by tlie way, being "having rigbt 
desires in the heart." 



T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., PH.D. 131 

ascetics it is said in condemnation that '' within 
thee there is ravening, while the outside thou 
makest clean." And we have the whole armour 
of the Buddhist, with uprightness as the cloak, 
and meditation as the breastplate, watchfulness as 
the shield, insight as the spear, the Word as the 
sw'Ord, the threefold wisdom as the crest of the 
helmet, and the fruit of the excellent way (that is, 
Arahatship or Nirvana) as the jewel at its summit. 
One might go on quoting such passages indefinitely 
or point out phrases in the Buddhist writings which 
could be transferred to Christian sermons. But in 
no case does the analogy really run on all fours, 
nor could any serious argument be founded on the 
apparent identity of expression, or the suggested 
similarity of thought. 

For — and here we come to the gist of the matter 
— it is precisely those ideas in the Bible which are 
most instinctively and specially Christian, which 
are not only wanting in, but are absolutely con- 
tradicted in, Buddhism. In it we have an eth'cal 
system but no lawgiver, a world without a Creator, 
a salvation tvithout eternal life, and a sense of evil, 
but no conception of pardon, atonement, reconcili- 
ation, or redemption. To a Christian the world, 
though a vale of tears, is after all the Father's 
world; and the powers of sin and evil, though 



132 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

mighty, are as nothing when compared with the 
omnipotence of a reconciled Father. The Buddhist 
reverences the Buddha as the best and the wisest 
of men, the king of righteousness who has led the 
way to victory. But the Christian worships the 
Son of God, who is at the same time the Son of 
Man, the Divine Man, with that unspeakable love 
and adoration which are due to Him for His incar- 
nation and atoning death upon the cross. To the 
Christian life and immortality are brought to light 
by the Gospel ; by the Buddhist an immortal life 
is not only conceived as impossible, but ivould he 
looked upon as a disaster. These are essential 
matters. It is in such that not merely divergence 
but contradiction is visible at every step. And 
they really colour all those points of contact which 
seem to show, at first sight, a superjicial resem- 
blance. Thus the Buddhist humility is not humility 
before God, the Buddhist peace is not the peace of 
God, and the Buddhist wisdom is ignorance oj 
God. 

In the foregoing analysis I have only endeavoured, 
as clearly and accurately as possible, to compare the 
Buddhism of the Buddhist scriptures with Biblical 
theology. The history of Buddhism is the history 
of the greater half of the civilised w^orld for nearly 
two and a half millenniums ; the history of Chris- 



T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., PH.D. 133 

tiainty is the history of the other half for nearly 
two millenniums. To compare all- Buddhism with 
all Christianity would be a colossal, perhaps an im- 
possible task. And no attempt has been made to 
touch upon the points of contact between the Gospels 
and the Buddhist lives of the Buddha. Those who 
wish to see a full discussion of this latter subject, 
will find it in the elaborate work of Professor Sey del, 
of Leipsic. 

But perhaps the most instructive part of a com- 
parative study of Buddhism, is to be found in the 
astounding fact that the ethical revolution of 
Gotama, the stately bridge which he has attempted 
to build over the sorrow of the world, has led to 
the establishment of a papal hierarchy holding 
views as far apart from the subtle and deep-reaching 
doctrine of the Excellent Way, as Eoman Ultramon- 
tanism is from the simplicity of the Gospel. It is 
true that the resemblances here also are more 
apparent than real. But it is none the less in- 
structive that a system in many respects so true 
and so beautiful that Dr. Eeynolds says of its 
founder,^ " Verily our Lord would have said of 
Gotama, *Thou art not far from the kingdom of 
God/ " should have ended in Lamaism, its shaven 

1 In " Buddhism : a comparison and a contrast between Buddhism 
and Christianity ; '' published by the Religious Tract Society, p. 64. 



134 BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

priests, its bells and rosaries and images and holy 
water, its services in surpliced robes with double 
choirs and processions and mystic rites and incense, 
its abbots and monks and nuns of many grades, its 
worship of the double Virgin and of saints and 
angels, its huge monasteries, its gorgeous cathedrals, 
its powerful hierarchy, its cardinals, and above all, 
its pope with a tiara on his head, and thought to 
be the incarnation and vicegerent of a spiritual 
power in the skies. 

Are we to suppose that this marvellous coinci- 
cidence is due to a miracle (or rather to ten 
thousand miracles) ? or are we to conclude that 
in such matters similar causes acting, quite in- 
dependently, under similar conditions will produce 
similar results ? 



ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 



IX. 

By the Hon. EASMUS B. ANDERSON*, Minister of the 
United States, Denmark, and Author op "Norse 
Mythology," "America not discovered by Columbus,'' &o. 

TN the forces and phenomena of Nature we must 
look for the origin of the heathen mythologies. 
Thus the shepherds found their gods in the bright 
stars that twinkled every night, and seemed to 
whisper to them of secrets which they could not 
themselves divine and of powers they did not 
know. Tlius when the Norsemen heard the 
thunder roll and saw the lightning-flash crushing 
everything in its way, there came to them an 
image of a mighty god who rode in his chariot 
athwart the heavens with such din and crash, and 
so fast that his path was wrapped in flames. 

The two European mythologies best known to 
us are the Greek and the Scandinavian. As widely 
as Greeks differ from the Scandinavians, so widely 



136 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

is Scandinavian mythology different from the 
Greek. The chief end sought by the Greeks was 
beauty and harmony. Fostered beneath a clear 
sky and a sun that never scorches, in a climate 
where north winds never pierce, the Greek cherished 
beauty in his soul and fashioned gods and goddesses 
remarkable for their sweetness and grace. But in 
the ice-bound regions of the North, where the lonof 
arms of the glaciers clutch the valleys in their cold 
embrace, and the death-portending avalanches cut 
their way down the mountain sides, the people 
dwelt with a peculiar intensity of feeling upon the 
tragedy of Nature. From childhood the Norsemen 
were trained to strife, and thus a race was developed 
fond of rocking on the stormy seas and of reddening 
the keen sword-edge in the blood of the foe — and 
hence their gods became strong and warlike. The 
old Norsemen cared but little for quiet harmony 
and beauty. Theirs were the valkyries who rode 
through the air and hovered over the battlefield to 
select the heroes who were to fall and be carried to 
Odin, there to fight again until the world should 
perish in Eagnarok. 

The ancient Scandinavians cannot be said to 
have possessed any clearly-defined knowledge of a 
god outside of Nature — that is, of any Supreme 
God. Their highest divinity was Odin, the father 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 137 

of gods and men, as he is styled. He occupies a 
position like that of Zeus in Greek mythology. 
Still there are passages both in the Eddas and in 
the Sagas which more or less vaguely point to a 
god outside of Nature nnd higher than Odin. In 
the lay of Hyndla, in the Elder Edda, we find this 
striking passage : — 

Then one is born Then comes another 

Greater than all ; Yet more mighty ; 

He becomes strong But him dare I not 

With the strengths of earth ; Venture to name : 

The mightiest king Few further may look 

Men call him, Than to where Odin 

Fast knit in peace To meet the wolf goes. 
With all powers. 

Odin we know ^^ goes to meet the wolf " (that is, 
the Fenriswolf), in Eagnarok, in the final conflict 
between all good and evil powers, and thus the 
poet has here referred to an unknown or nameless 
god, just as the Greeks, according to Paul, had an 
altar with the inscription : To the Unknown God. 
It was of this same unknown god that one of the 
ancient Greek poets had said that in him we live, 
and move, and have our being. Thus just as the 
Greeks found in the labyrinth of their heathen 
deities a god greater than Zeus, so the Supreme 
God, superior to Odin, stands out, though less dis- 
tinctly, in the Scandinavian heathen belief. 

10 



138 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

And in accordance with this statement we 
find that this "yet more mighty one" whom 
the rhapsodist ''dare not venture to name** is 
worshipped by various old and thoughtful men 
in the pre-Christian age. I will mention a few 
examples. 

It is recorded that Ingemund the Old, a heathen 
Norseman in Iceland, bleeding and dying, prayed 
the nameless god to forgive his murderer, Rolleif. 

Thorkel Maane, a supreme judge of Iceland in 
the heathen time, a man of unblemished life, and 
distinguished as a most wise magistrate, declared 
that he would worship no other God than Him 
who had created the sun, and in his dying hour he 
prayed the Father of Light to illuminate his soul 
in the darkness of death. It is related that when 
Thorkel Maane had arrived at the age of maturity 
and reflection he refused a blind obedience to tra- 
ditionary custom, and employed much of his time 
in weighing the established tenets of his country- 
men by the standard of reason. He divested his 
mind of all prejudice ; he pondered on the sublimity 
of Nature, and guided himself by maxims founded 
on truth and good sense. By these means he dis- 
covered not only the fallacy of the asafaith, but 
also became a convert to the belief in the existence 
of a power more mighty than Odin or Thor. In 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 139 

his Creator he recognised his God and to Him 
alone directed his worship, from a conviction that 
none other was worthy to be honoured and adored. 
On perceiving the approach of death this pious 
man asked to be conveyed into the open air in 
order that, as he said, he might in his last moments 
contemplate the glories of the great God who had 
made the earth and the heavens and all that in 
them is. 

One more example will suffice. Harold Fairhair, 
the first sovereign of Norway, the king who united 
Norway under his sceptre in the year 872, was 
accustomed to assist at the public offerings made 
by the people in honour of their gods. As none 
other than the Odinic relio;ion was known in that 
country in their days, he acted with prudence in 
not betraying either contempt or disregard for the 
prevailing worship of the land, lest his subjects, 
stimulated by such example, might become in- 
different, not only to their sacred, but also to their 
political duties. Yet in his heart of hearts he re- 
jected those superstitious ceremonies, and believed 
in the existence of a more powerful divinity whom 
he secretly worshipped. '' I swear/' he once said, 
'^ never to make my oflferings to an idol, but to 
that God alone whose omnipotence has formed the 
world and stamped man with His own image. It 



140 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

would be an act of folly in me to expect help from 
bim whose power and empire arises from the 
accidental hollow of a tree or the peculiar form of 
a stone/' 

All will agree that every mythology embodies 
some religious faith. Just as we at the present 
time seek to find God by philosophical speculation 
(natural theology), by our emotional nature, by our 
good deeds, or by all these at one time, and just as 
we, when we have found Him, rest upon His breast, 
although we do not fully agree as to our conception 
of Him, each one of us having his own god as each 
has his own rainbow, so the heathens of old sought 
God everywhere — in the rocks, in the babbling 
stream, in the heavy ear of gr^dn, in the star- 
strewn sky of night, and in the splendour of the 
sun. To interpret a myth therefore is not only to 
give its source but also its aim, together with the 
thouo'hts and feelings it awakened in the* human 
breast. 

Many writers have claimed that the Scandinavian 
mythology is a degradation of and aberration from 
the Biblical religion. They take the position that 
there was originally one tongue and one religion. 
Viewed from this standpoint the two Eddas of 
Iceland are a sort of Old and New Testament, 
which have come down to us through vast ages, 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 141 

growing, as traditions do, continually more obscure, 
and accumulatino; lower matter and more divero:ent 
and more pagan doctriiie?^, as the walls of old castles 
become covered with mosses and lichens, till they 
finally assume the form in which they were col- 
lected from the lips of the Norsemen and put in a 
permanent written form. Interpreters of this school 
claim that through all mythologies there run certain 
great lines which converge toward one common 
centre, and point to an original source of a religious 
faith which has grown dimmer and more disfioured 
the farther it has gone. They say Central Asia is 
the geographical centre from which all the systems 
of heathen belief have proceeded. Upon this theory 
Loke of the Scandinavians, Pluto of the Greeks, 
Ahriman of the Persians, Siva of the Hindoos, &c., 
are all originally the devil of the Bible, who has 
changed his name and, more or less, his personal 
form and characteristics. The Scandinavian Odin, 
Vile, and Ve ; Odin, Hoener, and Loder ; and Odin, 
Thor, and Bilder, are degenerated representatives 
of the Biblical Trinity. There are scholars even at 
the present day who find in the Scandinavian cos- 
mogony, in a somewhat mutilated and interpolated 
condition, the Biblical story of the creation, pre- 
servation, destruction, and regeneration of this 
world. Ygdrasil, the wonderful ash- tree of exist- 



142 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

ence, is the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. 
Ask aud Embla, the first human pair, are Adam 
and Eve ; the blood of the sLiin giant Ymer, in 
which the whole race of frost giants was drowned, 
excerpting one pair who were saved in a skiff and 
from whom a new giant race descended, is made to 
represent the deluge. The citadel called Midgard 
is the Tower of Babel. In the death of Balder, 
slain by Hoder, who was instigated by Loke, is 
found the crucifixion of Christ slain by Judas, who 
was instigated by the devil. The heaven and hell 
so vividly described in the E-ldas furnish a large 
field for comparison with Biblical passages on the 
same subjects. The trouble with these interpreters 
is that they attempt to prove too much. It is in 
our judgment sufficient to say that races which can 
trace their languages to a common origin have also 
got their religious systems from a common source. 
We know that the Aryan or Indo-European lan- 
guages converge into one in the dim })ast, and 
consequently we assume that the Arj^an religions 
flow from a common original spring. But so long 
as no scholar has demonstrated that Greek or 
Norse are originally the same language as Hebrew, 
there is no good reason for assuming that Ask 
and Embla are merely Norse names for Adam 
and Eve, 



THE HON. KASMUS B. ANDERSON. 143 

On tlie other hand, just as we have many 
Semitic words incorporated in the English tongue, 
and just as Aryan words have found their way 
into Hebrew, so Scandinavian Mythology has been 
more or less influenced by Christian ideas after 
the two systems of religion met and came in con- 
tact with each other. And who denies that the 
Christian Church has borrowed much from the 
various mythologies of Europe ? In the present 
customs of the European peoples much of the 
old heathenism is preserved. Nay, we might 
almost say that the whole Odinic mythology still 
exists, not as a faith and doctrine, but as a form 
of worship adapted to Christianity. The old 
great Scandinavian festivals with their various 
ceremonies have simply been converted into Chris- 
tian festivals. This is true of Christmas, which 
tlie old Norseman called Yule ; and is not the 
Christmas tree a survival of the ash-tree Ygdrasil ? 
The festivals of Easter, of St. John, and of St. 
Michael are old Scandinavian festivals Christia- 
nised. In many instances, even the places of 
worship were retained. Where a heathen divi- 
nity had long been worshipped, the Christians 
built a church and dedicated it to some saint or 
other, to whom, henceforth, both the worship 
and the myth ay ere referred and became blended. 



144 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

St. Michael took tlie place of Odin or Tlior, and 
the Odin or Thor mvths were henceforth told of 
St. Michael. Where there was a tree sacred to 
Odin, an image of St. Mary was hung up, but in 
other respects the old form of worship was con- 
tinued under the protection of the Church. Of 
course the customs have taken a stronwr hold 
on the Catholic Church, while Protestants have 
allowed many of them to pass into disuse. What 
we mean to emphasise is simply the fact that 
while Scandinavian mythology doubtless borrowed 
much from the Christian religion, and in turn 
lent much to it, the two systems are essentially 
different, and there is no evidence of a common 
original source. 

As already indicated, Scandinavian mythology 
must look for its fundamental interpretation in 
physical Nature. The divinities are the forces 
and phenomena of Nature personified. The works 
of the gods correspond faithfully to the events 
and scenes of the outward world. But we must 
not neglect to apply an ethical or spiritual ex- 
planation as well. The spiritual and physical 
interpretation must be combined. In other words, 
we must regard the gods as as human as possible. 
The phenomena and forces of nature were per- 
sonified by the ancient Scandinavians into deities 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 145 

and the myths were elaborated to suit the moral, 
intellectual, and emotional nature — the inner life 
of man. The deities were conceived in human 
form, with human attributes and affections. The 
ancient Scandinavians depicted themselves in their 
gods, and so clothed them with their own facul- 
ties of mind and body in respect to good and 
evil, virtue and vice, right and wrong. Kead 
what the great Norse scholar Eudolf Keyser has 
said on this point : — 

^' The gods are the ordaining powers of Nature 
clothed in personality. They direct the world 
which they created ; but beside them stand the 
mighty goddesses of fate and time, the great 
norns, who sustain the world- structure, the all- 
embracing tree of the world, that is Ygdrasil. 
The life of the world is a struggle between the 
good and the light gods on the one side, and the 
offspring of chaotic matter, the giants. Nature's 
disturbing; forces, on the other. This struofo^le 
extends also into man's being: the spirit pro- 
ceeds from the gods, the body belongs to the 
world of the giants. They struggle with each 
other for the supremacy. If the spirit conquers 
by virtue and bravery, man goes to heaven after 
death to fight in concert with the gods against 
the evil powers ; but if the body conquers and 



146 AKCIEKT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

links the spirit to itself by weakness nnd low 
desires, tlien man sinks after death to the world 
of the giants in the lower regions, and joins him- 
self with the evil powers in the warfare against 
the gods." 

Nature is the mother at w^hose breast we are 
all nourished. In ancient times she was the 
object of child-like contemplation and adoration. 
The contemplation of the heavens produced the 
myth about Odin, and the thunder-storm sug- 
gested Thor, as in the Greek mythology Argos 
with his hundred eyes represents the star-lit 
heavens, and the wandering lo w^iom Hera had 
set him to watch is the wandering moon. But 
stopping here would be too prosaic. It would 
be giving the empty shell and throwing away the 
kernel. The old Frisians regarded the world as 
a huge ship called Maningfual, a counterpart to 
the Scandinavian ash Ygdrasil. The mountains 
were its masts. The captain must go from one 
place to another of the ship to give his orders 
on horseback. The sailors go aloft as young men 
to make sail, and when they arrive down again 
their hair and beard are w^hite. Ay, are we not 
all sailors on board this great ship, and have we 
not all enough to do, each in his own way, to 
climb its ropes and ladders, and make and reef 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 147 

its sails, and do not our hairs turn grey ere we 
are aware of it? But take the human element 
out of these myths, and what is there left of 
them ? 

The sources to be examined in regard to 
Scandinavian mvtholoo;y are nianv and varied. 
Throughout the Scandinavian countries are found 
monumental stones on which Runic inscriptions 
liave been written in heathen times. Of these 
'' Runic Monuments/' no less than three folio 
volumes have been published by the great and 
indefatig^able scholar and runolomst, Professor 
George Stephens of Copenhagen. 

From heathen Germany we have a few ancient 
laws and a few glossaries containing mythological 
words. The Lex Salica, of which we have a Latin 
translation, was doubtless originally produced in 
the German tongue. In the time of Chlodeviof 
it was translated into Latin, and here and there 
words from the original text were inserted paren- 
thetically, to guarantee, as it were, the correctness 
of the version. But in course of time these words 
were either wholly omitted or greatly corrupted 
by transcribers. Then there are formulse by which 
the new converts to Christianity renounced the 
old gods, and in which names of heathen divini- 
ties therefore occur. But precious though it be, 



148 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

the amount of mythological information to be 
gathered from these and similar sources is very 
small. A richer vein of information is the toler- 
ably well represented collection of German heroic 
poems, among which the most important are the 
Niblung story and Gudrun. The Heliand pre- 
serves a number of heathen phrases and figures 
of speech. The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf poem would 
be more valuable had not the Christian transcriber 
conceived it to be his duty to omit the names of 
the heathen gods occurring in the lay. 

Iceland, that wonderful island of the cold and 
boisterous North Sea, is the Mecca to which all 
they must turn who would understand the Odinic 
religion. Iceland is the Patmos where the Apoca- 
lypse of the Teutonic race was recorded. Here 
we find the well of Mimer and the fountain of Urd. 
In Icelandic we find a whole library of mythological 
literature, put in writing after the introduction of 
Christianity (a.d. iooo), and after the people had 
adopted the Eoman alphabet, but still written in 
the spirit of the asafaith, ''naught extenuating 
and putting down naught in malice.*' The most 
important of the Icelandic documents are the Elder 
and the Younger Edda. The former is a collection 
of mythic and heroic poems, undoubtedly fragments 
of the songs that were preserved in the schools of 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 149 

the priests of heathendom. And here it is proper 
to suggest that the Celts described by Caesar in his 
Commentaries on the Gallic War were not of the 
same race as the present Irish, Welsh, &c., but a 
Teutonic tribe. The present inhabitants of Bre- 
tagne are not descendants of the ancient Gauls, 
but are immigrants into France from Great Britain. 
Caesar gives us a glimpse of the manner in which 
mythological songs and epics were preserved in 
ancient times in his description of the Druids. He 
tells us that tlie literature in their keeping was so 
extensive that it required twenty years to commit 
it to memory ! This militates against the tijeory 
that the Eddie poems were folk-songs, that is, 
known by the whole people. That interesting 
passage in Caesar describing the Druids opens to 
us a world of information. It gives us in a few 
striking sentences the key to the mystery in regard 
to the preservation in oral form, through many 
centuries, of the Vedas, the Iliad and Odyssey, the 
Niblung story, Beowulf, &c., and the Elder Edda. 
How and when the Elder Edda was recorded 
with Roman characters is a subordinate question. 
Whether it was gathered from the lips of persons 
who yet remembered fragments of the old Druidic 
songs of the north and put into a skin-book by the 
priest Ssemund Sigfusson, who died in the year 



150 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

1 1 33, or by some other Icelander, is an interesting 
but not important question. Even so great a 
scholar as the Swede Erik Gustaf Geijer contends 
that the Elder Edda existed in Euiiic before it 
appeared in Eoman characters. Scarcely less im- 
portant is the Younger Edda, said to be written 
by Snorre Sturleson, the great author of Heim- 
skringla, who died in 1241. This work gives in 
prose form, with here and there a poetic quotation, 
a succinct account of the Odinic relioion from the 
creation to the destruction and regeneration of the 
world. Some of the stanzas quoted are not re- 
corded in the Elder Edda. 

The Heimskringla, completed by Snorre Sturle- 
son about the year 1230, contains a vast amount 
of information about Scandinavian heathendom, 
for it gives an elaborate account of the introduc- 
tion of Christianity in Norway, portraying the 
conflict between the old and the new relii>ion, 
and begins with sketches of a number of kings, 
who ruled Norway for one hundred and forty years 
before the introduction of Christianit}^ Hence 
valuable information may be found in that work, 
not only of the rites and ceremonies prescribed by the 
Odinic ritual, but also of the morals and habits in- 
culcated and produced by the Odinic code. Several 
Icelandic Sagas are also of value in this respect. 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSOIST. 151 

The value of Caesar has been indicated. AVith 
him ranks Tacitus. In the other Roman and 
Greek writers there is but little to be gleaned 
in regard to Teutonic mythology. Next after 
Caesar and Tacitus came the Christian writers 
down through the foggy and dark Middle Ages, 
who, instead of writing in German or Enorlish 
(Anglo-Saxon) or other vernaculars, took to scrib- 
bling in Latin ; but the very small amount of 
mythological information contained in their books 
is due in part to their ignorance, but maiuly to 
their hostility to the heathen religion. Among 
this class of writers the North presents a remark- 
able exception in Saxo Grammaticus, who lived in 
Denmark in the 12th century. He wrote a 
Historia Danica and embodied it in an outline of 
Scandinavian mythology based on old songs. But 
he presents it as history, assuming Odin, Thor, 
and the other deities to have been kings and 
potentates in the North. The first eight books 
of his history are exclusively mythological. He 
has had a world of valuable light, though he him- 
self saw notbing. 

Finally the student of Scandinavian mythology 
must look for fragments of Odinism in the cus- 
toms, habitSj speech, traditions, ballads, folk-lore 
tales, and in the usages of the Christian Churches 



152 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

tlirouobout Teutondom. The folk-lore tales are 
especially valuable, and during the last half cen- 
tury they have found splendid collectors in Ger- 
many (the brothers Grimm), in Norway (Asbjomsen 
and Moe), and in Iceland (Jon Arnason). These 
stories, like many of the ballads, are myths, in 
which the names of the gods have been changed 
or suppressed. The ballad and the folk-lore tale 
are the resurrection of the buried myth. 

Scandinavian mythology and its relation to 
Biblical mythology is too vast a subject to be 
exhaustively treated in a magazine article. AVe 
shall simply give in the next article^ a hrief 
synopsis^ condensed, as it were, under hydraulic 
pressure, and in the course of the narrative dwell 
more especially on those features which have 
counterparts in Biblical theology. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT 
SCANDINAVIANS. 



By the Hon. KASMUS B. ANDERSON. 

TXiTHERE the Scandinavian myth or doctrine is 
given, the reader must supply Biblical ver- 
sion from his memory. 

** It was Time's morning 
When Ymer lived ; 
There was no sand, no sea, 
Nor cooling billows ; 
Earth there was none, 
No lofty heaven, 
No spot of living green, 
Only a deep profound/' 

Thus the Elder Edda. The beginning was this : 

Many ages ere the earth was made there existed 

two worlds. Far to the north was Niflheim (the 

nebulous world), and far to the south was Mus- 

pelheim (the fire world). Between them was 

Ginungagap (the yawning gap). In the middle 

11 



154 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

of Niflheim lay the spring Hyergelmer, and from 
it flowed twelve ice-cold streams called the Eli- 
vogs, of which Gjol was situated nearest Hers 
gate. Muspelbeim was so bright and hot that it 
burned and blazed, and could not be entered by 
those who did not have their home there. In 
the midst of this intense lioiit and burnino; heat 
sat SuKT, guarding its borders with a flaming 
sword in his hand. The Elivogs rivers flowed far 
from their spring-head in Hvergelmer into Ginun- 
gagap, and the venom they carried with them 
hardened, as does dross from a furnace, and be- 
came ice. Vapours gathered and froze to rime, 
and thus were formed in the yawning gap many 
layers of congealed vapour. But the south side 
of the abyss was lighted up by sparks from Mus- 
pelbeim. Thus, w^hile freezing cold and gathering 
gloom proceeded from Niflheim, the other side of 
the gulf was exposed to the dazzling radiance and 
scorching blasts of Muspelheim, and when the 
heated blasts met the frozen vapours it melted 
into drops, and hy the might of himi who sent 
the heat, these drops quickened into life and 
took the form of a giant man. His name w^as 
Ymer, and he became the progenitor of all the 
race of giants. At the same time, and in the 
same manner, sprang into life a cow, Audhumbla, 



THE HON. KASMUS B. ANDERSON. 155 

by whose milk Ymer was nourished. Tlie cow 
fed herself by licking the salt rime on the rocks, 
and at the end of the first day she produced by 
her licking the stones a man's hair, on the second 
evening a head, and on the third evening a perfect 
man. His name was Bnre. He was fair, great, 
and mighty. He begat a son, by name Bor. Bor 
married the giantess Bestla, daughter of Bolthorn, 
and she bore him three sons, Odin, Vile, and Ve, 
and Odin became tlie father of the gods who rule 
heaven and earth. The three brothers, Odin, Vile, 
and Ve, slew the giant Ymer, and when he fell so 
much blood flowed that all the race of giants w as 
drowned excepting Bergelmer and his wife, who 
escaped in a boat (ark) and perpetuated their race. 
The three sons of Bor dragged Ymer's body into 
Ginungagap, and out of it they made the world : 
of his flesh the land, of his blood the ocean, of his 
bones the rocks, of his hair the forests, of his skull 
the vaulted sky, which they decorated with red 
hot flakes from Muspelheim to serve as sun, moon, 
and stars. Ymer's brain tliey scattered in the air, 
and made of them the melancholy clouds. Dwarfs 
quickened like maggots in Ymer s flesh. But tliere 
were yet no human beings. One day Odin, Hoener, 
and Loder w^ere walking by the sea and found two 
trees, an ash and an elm. They made of them the 



156 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

first man and woman. Odin gave them life and 
spirit, Hoener endowed them with reason and the 
power of motion, and Loder gave them blood, hear- 
ing, vision, and a fair complexion. The man they 
called Ask, and the woman Embla, and from them 
are descended the whole human family. 

The counterparts of this story in Genesis need 
only to be mentioned. As a proof of the thorough- 
ness, depth, and comprehensiveness of the old Scan- 
dinavian mind, the reader will note the fact that 
instead of making the world pass simply from 
chaos to cosmos, the old Scandinavians took a 
step farther back into primeval time, and con- 
ceived a pre-chaotic state (Muspelheim, Niflheim, 
and Ginungagap), then a chaotic epoch (Ymer, 
Audhumbla, Bure, Bor, Bestla, Bolthorn, Odin, 
Vile, and Ve), and finally cosmos made from the 
slain Ymer. The gods belonging to the Asgard 
Pantheon and also giants came into being in the 
middle or chaotic epoch. Odin was born in chaos. 
But the Scandinavian conceived living and life- 
giving beings in the pre-chaotic age. Surt guarded 
Muspelheim before any creation or birth has taken 
place. Is not he the unknown god who is from 
everlasting to everlasting? Surt is also the last 
figure who appears in Eagnarok, the destruction 
of the world. He flings fire and flame over the 



THE HON. KASMUS B. ANDERSOIT. 157 

world, and is the last one who appears in that 
terrible act of the drama. Elsewhere it is stated 
that Nidhug, a terrible serpent, dwells in Hvergel- 
mer, in Niflheim. Venom flowed with the Elivogs 
rivers out of Hvergelmei*. This points to an evil 
being in Niflheim, that is from everlasting, but 
after Eagnarok he sinks into the unfathomable abyss 
never to rise again, and thus he is not to everlast- 
ing. This dualism in the pre-chaotic epoch is a 
very interesting point in Scandinavian religion. 

The Odinic pantheon has twelve gods to whom 
Divine worship is due, and there are tw^entv-six 
goddesses. The gods dwell in A^^gard, but nearly 
every god has a separate dwelling. Thus Odin's 
high seat is Hlidsbjalf, whence he looks out upon 
all the nine worlds. He also has a large hall, the 
famous Valhal, whither he invites all men fallen in 
battle. Thor lives in Thrudvang; Balder in Brieda- 
blik, &c. Concerning the difl'erent gods, and par- 
ticularly about Thor, Odin, Balder, and Frey, there 
are a number of beautiful myths, but it is not 
within the scope of this article to produce them 
here. 

At once the most poetical and significant, the 
most lofty, beautiful, and impressive myth, is that 
of the great world tree, the ash Ygdrasil, the very 
name of which has its boughs laden with thought. 



158 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

It is the tree of existence, the tree of life and 
knowledge, the tree of grief and fate, the tree of 
time and space ; it is the tree of the universe. 
This tree has three roots, extending into the three 
principal worlds. The lowest strikes down into 
Niflheim, into the well Hvergelmer, where it is 
gnawed by the ancient dragon Nidhug, and all 
his reptile brood. The second root stretches into 
Jotunheim to the fountain of Mimer, where wisdom 
and wit lie hidden, and of whose waters Odin once 
purchased a draught, leaving one of his eyes as a 
pledge with Mimer. The third root is found in 
Asgard among the gods, near the sacred fountain 
of Urd, the norn of the past, where the gods sit 
in judgtnent, riding thither daily over the Bifrost 
bridge, that is the rainbow. At this fountain dwell 
the three norns, or fates, Urd (the Past), Verdande 
(the Present), and Skuld (the Future), and dispense 
the destinies of men. They do not spin the thread 
but weave the web of men's lives. They weave a 
web of golden thread from East to West, from the 
radiant dawn to the glowinor sunset of man's hori- 
zon. The woof of this web is fixed in the dark 
North, but the web woven by Urd and Verdande 
is torn into pieces every evening by Skuld. The 
branches of Ygdrasil spread over the whole world, 
and aspire above heaven itself. An eagle is perclied 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 159 

on the topmoyt bough, and between his eyes a 
hawk. A squirrel called Eatatosk runs up and 
down the tree, seeking to cause strife between the 
eagle and Nidhug. Four stags leap beneath its 
branches and feed on its buds. Five swans swim 
in the Urd fountain, and everything placed therein 
becomes as white as the film of an egg-shell. The 
noriis draw water from this spring, and with it 
they sprinkle Ygdrasil in order that the boughs 
may continue green in spite of the destructive 
agencies that constantly assail it. Honey-dew 
falls from Ygdrasil, and is food for the bees. Odin 
hung nine nights on this tree, and ofi*ered himself 
to himself. Ygdrasil is a grand myth, and grand 
things have been said of it by Thomas Carlyle and 
Karl Blind, to whose descriptions the reader is 
referred. 

It may be worth while to notice in passing the 
frequent recurrence of the number three in Scandi- 
navian mythology. There were originally thixe 
worlds-, Niflheim, Muspelheim, and Ginungagap ; 
there were three stages of development, the pre- 
chaotic, chaotic, and cosmos. Three gods, Odin, 
Vile, and Ve, created the world out of Ymer's 
body. Three gods, Odin, Hoener, and Loder, 
created the first human pair. Ygdrasil has three 
roots, stretching into three worlds, and these three 



160 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN KELIGION. 

worlds are each divided into three subdivisions or 
sub-worlds, that is nine, which is three times three. 
There are three norns, three fountains, Hvergelmcr s, 
Urd's, and Mimer's, and Odin hung three times 
three nights on the ash Ygdrasil, and several other 
recurrences of this sacred number might still be 
added before the list is complete. In the Bible w^e 
have the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, while Odin, 
Vile, and Ve mean Spirit, Will, and Sanctity. Ve 
will readilv be recomised as related to the German 
Wei in Weinacht (Christmas). 

The development of the evil principle in Scandi- 
navian mythology is scarcely less elaborately treated 
than in Biblical theology. How the dragon Nid- 
huo; and his brood orioinated in Hverc^elmer that 
fountain Niflheim, and the probability that he 
existed from the time when primeval evolution 
took its beginning, has already been stated. The 
giant descendants of Ymer were evil, and they did 
not all perish in his blood-deluge, for Bergelmer 
and his household escaped like Noah of old, and 
like him produced a numerous offspring, with whom 
Thor and the other oods carried on constant war. 
But the great type or representation of evil is 
Loke. He is, indeed, the instigator of all the mis- 
fortunes that have happened both to gods and to 
men. He is of giant race, but was adopted by the 



THE HON. KASMUS B. A^^DERSON. 161 

gods, and was already in the dawn of time a foster- 
brother of Odin. He may not improperly be styled 
a fallen anoel. The countenance of Loke is fair, 
but his disposition is thoroughly bad. It is an 
interesting fact that the Scandinavian mythology 
makes the devil good-looking and attractive in- 
stead of ugly-looking and repulsive. Why Chris- 
tianity should represent the devil as the ugliest- 
looking being, and at the same time ascribe so 
much influence to him, is a mystery to say the 
least. Loke frequently accompanies the gods, and 
they make use of his strength and cunning, but 
when out of sight he usually plots with the giants 
for the purpose of bringing ruin upon the gods. 
He became the father of three terrible children in 
Jotunheim, that is to say, in the home of the giants. 
These are (i) the Fenriswolf, (2) the Midgard-ser- 
pent, also called Jormundgand, and (3) Hel, the 
goddess of death. The gods knew that these chil- 
dren of Loke were growing up and would some 
day cause them great mischief. Therefore they 
bound the Fenriswolf on a barren island and put 
a sword in his open stretched mouth, but for this 
the god Tyr had to sacrifice his right hand. They 
cast the Midgard-serpent into the deep sea, where 
he encircles the whole world and bites his own tail. 
Thor was at one time out fishing with the giant 



162 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

Hymer. He caught the Midgard-serpent on his 
hook baited with a giant bull's head, and would 
have sLiin it with his hammer Mjohier, had it not 
been for the giant Hymer who got frightened and 
cut the fishing-line just at the moment when Thor 
had his hammer raised to strike. The third child 
of Loke, Hel, goddess of death, was thrown into 
Niflheim, and Odin commanded that all who died 
of sickness or old age should go to her ; while 
warriors slain in battle were borne on valkyrian 
arms to Valhal. Hel's dwelling is called Helheim, 
and is large and terrible. Indeed her realm in the 
lower world is divided into nine regions one below 
the other, and it is in the lowest of these that her 
palace is called Anguish, her table Famine, the 
waiters Slowness and Delay, the threshold Preci- 
pice, and the bed Care. The English word hell is, 
of course, intimately connected with her name. 

Loke caused the greatest sorrow to gods and 
men, when by his cunning he brought about the 
death of Balder. Balder is the most Christiike 
character in the Scandinavian mythology, and tiie 
account of his death has a strange similarity to 
that of the crucifixion of Christ. Balder was the 
favourite of all nature, of all the gods, and of men. 
He w^as the son of Odin and Frigg, and the Edda 
says that it may be truly said of him that ho is 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 163 

the best god, and that all mankind are loud in his 
praise. So fair and dazzling is he in form and 
features that rays of light seem to issue from him, 
and we may form some idea of the beauty of bis 
bair when we know that tbe wbitest of all flowers 
is called Balder s brow. Balder is the mildest, tbe 
wisest, and the most eloquent of the gods, yet such 
is bis nature that tbe judgment be bas pronounced 
can never be altered. He dwells in the heavenly 
mansion called Breidablik (that is, broad-shining 
splendour) into which nothing unclean can enter. 

Balder was tormented by terrible dreams indicat- 
ing that his life w^as in clanger. He communicated 
his dreams to bis fellow -gods, who resolved to con- 
jure all things animate and inanimate not to barm 
him, and accordingly Odins wife Frigg, took an 
oath from all things that tbey would do Balder no 
harm. But still Odin felt anxious, and saddling 
bis eigbt-footed hor-e Sleipner, he rode down to 
Niflbeim, wbere be waked tbe vala or seeress, and 
compelled ber to give bim information about the 
fate of Balder. Wben it had been made known 
that all things had taken a solemn oath not to hurt 
Balder, it became a favourite pastime of the gods at 
their meetings to put bim up as a mark and shoot 
at him. But it sorely vexed Loke to see that 
Balder was not hurt. So he took on the guise of 



164 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

an old woman, went to Fri^o; and asked her if all 
things had promised to spare Balder. From Frigg 
he learned that on account of its insignificance she 
had neglected to exact an oath from the mistletoe. 
So he straightwny went and pulled this up, repaired 
to the place where the gods were assembled, and 
induced the blind god Hoder to throw the mistletoe 
at his brother and do him honour as did the other 
gods. Loke himself guided Hoders hand. The 
twig did not miss its shining mark and Balder fell 
dead. The gods were struck speechless with terror. 
When they had had time to recover their senses, 
Frigg sent Heimod to the goddess Hel to ask her 
to permit Balder to return to Asgard. Hel said 
she would release Balder if it was true that he was 
so universally beloved, and this she would test by 
observing if all things would weep for him. Mes- 
sengers were despatched throughout all the w^)rld 
to beseech all things to weep Balder out from Hers 
domain. And all things did so with alacrity, men, 
animals, the earth, stones, trees, and metals, just as 
we see things weep when they come out of the frost 
into the warm air (a beautiful evidence that Balder 
is the sun or summer). The messengers were re- 
turning confident that their mission had been suc- 
cessful, but on their way home they found a hag 
crouching on the ground. She called herself 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 165 

Tliokk, but she was none else than Loke in dis- 
guise. Thokk said that she could not weep other 
than dry tears, and so Hel kept her prey. Now 
as Loke is physical heat and fire, Thokk's dry 
tears are the sparks that fly from the burning 
wood. 

Soon afterwards Loke was captured and bound 
with strong cords to the points of rocks in a 
cavern. A serpent was suspended over him in 
such a manner that the venom fell into Loke's 
face drop by drop. But Sigyn, Loke s wife, took 
pity on him. She stands by him and receives the 
drops as they fall in a cup, which she empties as 
often as it is filled. But while she is emptying it, 
venom falls upon Loke's face, which makes him 
shriek with horror, and twist his body about so 
violently that the whole earth quakes, and thus 
earthquakes are produced. The relation of Loke to 
the devil, or Satan, in Biblical theology needs not 
to be pointed out. 

But when Balder, the bright and good, had 
passed from the happy family circle of the gods, 
to the cold and gloomy abodes of Hel, the awful 
day of doom was impending. It was a fiital thing 
for the gods, and for the world, that they united 
themselves with the giant race. Adam and Eve 
should not have held intercourse with the wily 



166 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

serpent in the garden of Eden. The Norse gods 
should not have admitted Loke into Asgard. 
Christ's and Balder's death was the result, and 
this hastened the day when the whole world shall 
be destroyed, when gods, and men, and giants, 
shall perish in Eagnarok, the twilight of the gods. 
Increasing corruption and strife in the world are 
the signs that this grea,t and awful event is im- 
pending. Continuous winters rage without any 
intervening summers now that Balder has been 
slain; the air is filled with violent storms, snow 
and darkness, and these are the signs that Eagnarok 
is at hand. The sun and moon are swallowed by 
giants who pursue them in the guise of wolves, 
and the heavens are stained with blood. The 
bright stars vanish, the earth trembles in the 
throes of the earthquake, and the mountains topple 
down with a tremendous crash. Then all chains 
and fetters are severed and the terrible Fenriswolf 
gets loose. The Midgard-serpent writhes in his 
giant rage and seeks land upon the tumultuous 
waves. Is not the reader forcibly reminded of 
passages in the New Testament, telling of the 
things that are to happen before the day of judg- 
ment ? And does not this description suggest the 
fall of Troy ? But what a serpent is this Scan- 
dinavian Jormungand, as compared with the tw^o 



THE HON. RASMUS B ANDERSON. 1G7 

serpents that appeared before the burning of Troy, 
issuing from the sea, and casting their slimy coils 
around Laocoon and his two sons, and causing their 
death ! But how much grander throughout, is not 
this Scandinavian Eagnarok than any other day of 
judgment ever conceived ! The ship Naglfar, which 
has been built of the nail-parings of dead men, 
floats upon the waters carrying the army of frost- 
giants over the sea, and having the mighty giant 
Hrym as its helmsman. Loke, too, is now freed 
from his dark cave and strong chains, and comes 
to the scene as the leader of the hosts of HeL 
The Fenriswolf advances and opens his enormous 
mouth. His lower jaw rests on the earth, and the 
upper touches the sky. It is only for want of 
room that he does not open his mouth still wider. 
Fire flashes from his mouth and nostrils. The 
Midgard-serpent placing himself by the side of the 
Fenriswolf vomits forth floods of venom that fill 
the air and the waters. In the midst of this 
confusion, crashing, and devastation, the heavens 
are rent in twain, and- the sons of Muspel come 
riding down through the opening in brilliant battle 
array. 

And now Suet, the same being that sent the 
heated blasts from Muspelheim into Ginungagap in 
the pre- chaotic world and by whose might the drops 



168 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

of venom sent by Nidhug in Niflheim quickened 
into the giant Ymer, he who is from everlasting to 
everlasting, this "unknown god" appears upon the 
scene, wrapped in flames of fire. His flaming sword 
outshines the sun himself. All the hosts here de- 
scribed come riding over the Bifrost bridge, that is 
the rainbow, which breaks beneath so great a weight. 
All this vast and glittering army direct their course 
to the great battle-field called Yigrid, and thus 
the giants on their part are ready for the final 
struggle. 

Meanwhile Heimdal, on the part of the gods, 
blows his Gjallarborn to arouse the gods, w^lio 
assemble without delay. In his embarrassment 
Odin now, for the third time in his history, goes to 
the older race, that is, the giants, to seek advice. 
He rides to Mimer's fountain, where he in his youth 
Lad pawned his eye for knowledge, to consult 
Mixuer as to how he and. his warriors are to enter 
into action. The answer he received is nowhere 
recorded ; but meanwhile the great ash Ygdrasil 
begins to quake and quiver, nor is there anything 
in heaven or on earth that does not fear and tremble 
in that awful hour. The gods and all the einherjes 
{Le., those men fallen in battle and brought to 
Valhal), don their armour, arm themselves, and 
speedily sally forth to the field of battle, led by 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 169 

Odin, who is easily recognised by his golden helmet, 
resplendent cuirass, and his flashing spear Gungner. 
Odin places himself against the Fenriswolf as the 
foe most worthy of his steel. Thor stands by 
Odin's side, but can give him no assistance, as he 
must himself contend with the Midgard-serpent — • 
and well matched they are. Frey encounters the 
mighty Surt himself, but though terrible blows are 
exchanged, Frey falls, and the Edda says he owes 
his defeat to the fact that he did not have that 
trusty sword which in his passion for a giantess he 
gave to his servant Skirner, when he sent him to 
ask the hand of the charming giantess Gerd. Thus 
it appears again and again that if the gods had not 
allowed themselves intercourse with the giants, they 
would not have come to this sad plight. In the 
last hour the dog Garm, which for ages had been 
chained in the Gnipa-cave, also breaks loose. He 
is the most terrible monster of all, and he attacks 
the one-handed Tyr, who had sacrificed his right 
hand in order to get the Fenriswolf bound. Garm 
and Tyr kill each other. Thor gains great renown 
by dealing the death-blow to the Midgard-serpent 
with his mighty hammer Mjolner, but he retreats 
only nine paces before he too falls dead, suffocated 
by the floods of venom which the expiring serpent 
vomits forth upon him. The Fenriswolf, with his 

12 



170 AKCTENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

enormous aiitl wide-open moutL, swallows Odin, 
but Vidar, Odin's son, immediately advances to 
avenge his father. He places his foot upon the 
wolfs lower jaw, the other he seizes with his hand 
and thus tears and rends him till he dies. Vidar 
is able to do this, for he wears a shoe, for which 
materials have been gathered through all ages. It 
is made of scraps of leather cut off from the toes 
and heels in making patterns for shoes. Hence, 
says the Edda, shoemakers should throw away such 
pieces, if they desire to render assistance to the 
gods in the final conflict. Loke and Heimdal meet 
in duel and become each others slayers. The con- 
flict is still raging with unabated fnry, when Surt, 
who is immortal, fling's fire and flames over the 
world. Smoke wreathes up around the universal 
ash-tree Ygdrasil ; the high flames play ngainst the 
lurid heavens and the earth consumed sinks down 
beneath the watery w^aste. It is of course possible 
that this Edda account of Eag;narok contains 
elements borrowed from Biblical theology, but the 
fundamental elements are no doubt orioinal, inas- 
much as it is in perfect harmony with the Scandi- 
navian system of mythology taken as a whole. 

After Eagnarok comes a new world. The earth 
rises a second time from the sea, and is completely- 
clothed in green. Sparkling cascades fall, over- 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. l7l 

arclied by rainbows glistening in tlie sunbeams. 
The eagle soars on lofty pinions in pursuit of his 
prey. The gods risen from the dead assemble on 
tlie Ida plains and talk about the strange things 
that have happened in the past, about the Fenris- 
wolf, about the Miclgard-serpent, about Loke, and 
about the ancient runes of the mighty Odin. The 
fields unsown yield their bountiful harvests, all ills 
cease and the gods live in peace. A new sun, 
brighter and more resplendent than the former one, 
appears, and there is naught but beauty, plenty, 
and happiness. This pertains, however, only to the 
condition of the gods after Ragnarok ; but what 
ideas did the ancient Scandinavians have of the 
future life of man ? They had two heavens and 
two hells for humanity, a heaven and hell before 
Eagnarok and a heaven and hell after Eagnarok, 
the hell before Ragnarok corresponding somewhat 
to the doctrine of purgatory in the Roman Church. 
Before Ragnarok, those fallen by the sword or in 
battle went to Valhal to Odin, became einherjes 
who took part with Odin in the first conflict on 
the plain of Vigrid. Those who died a straw-death, 
that is to say, who did not fall in combat, went 
after death to the domain of Hel, and though the 
Edda is silent on the subject, they probably fought 
on the side of Loke in Ragnarok. 



172 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

But after tlie twilight of the gods there is a 
heaven named Gimle and a hell called Nastrand. 
Gimle is a hall more radiant than the sun ; it is 
the uppermost realm, aud in it the virtuous shall 
dwell for ever and eujoy delights without end. 
Its description is brief but complete. Nastrand is 
the place set apart for the wicked. The word 
means strand of corpses. It is situated far from 
the sun, in the lowest region of the universe, is a 
large and terrible cave, the doors of which open 
only to the north. This cave is built of serpents 
wattled tooether, and the fang;ed heads of all the 
serpents turn into the cave, filling it with streams 
of venom in which perjurers, murderers, and adul- 
terers have to wade. The suffering is more terrible 
than tongue can tell. Bloody hearts hang outside 
of the breasts of the damned ; their faces are dyed 
in gore. Strong envenomed serpent fangs fiercely 
pierce their hearts ; their hands are riveted together 
with red-hot stones. Their clothes though wrapped 
in flames are not consumed, and remorseless ravens 
keep tearing their eyes from their heads. From 
this terrible cave the damned are, to increase their 
anguish, washed by the venomous floods into Hver- 
gelmer, that fearful well in Niflheim, where their 
souls and bodies are subjected to even more terrible 
pains and woes, torn by countless clusters of ser- 



THE HON. RASMUS B. AN DEE SON. 173 

pcDtSj and borne from agony to agony on the wliiz- 
ziijg plumage of the primeval Nidhiig, the dragon 
of the uttermost darkness. The old Scandinavians 
did not believe in eternal punishment. There are 
passages in the Elder Edda that point to a final 
reconciliation between light and darkness, Balder 
and Hoder, between good and evil. There comes 
a mighty one to the great judgment and makes the 
dragon Nidhug sink. The Vala or prophetess in 
her last vision in Voluspa points to a time when all 
that is evil shall be dissolved and w^ashed away by 
the eternal streams of goodness. This is the last 
vision of the vala : 

" There comes the dark 
Dragon flying, 
The shining serpent 
From the Nida mountains 
In the deep. 
Over the pL^in he flies ; 
Dead bodies he drags 
In his whizzing plumage. 
Now must Nidhug sinh.^'' 

Til ere is an intermediate state, a transition, a 
purification, a purgatory in Hel's domain, and this 
object must sooner or later be accomplished, and 
the day of the great judgment, when Nidhug must 
sink and never more lift his wings loaded witli 
suffering humanity, must come. The same idea is 



174 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

elaborated in Zendavesta. The Edda lias it con- 
densed in a single line, and does not Biblical theo- 
logy tell us how great joy there is in heaven over 
a converted sinner ? The Scandinavian like the 
Christian God is a God of mercy, who does not 
desire the eternal ruin of a sino;le sinner but that 
he shall repent and live, and he is a god of omni- 
potence, who is able to press the tears of repentance 
from the heart though it be hard as adamant. 
He can dissolve all darkness and gild the world 
with the shining; light of heaven. That Scandi- 
navian mythology teaches an eternal reward is 
certain, and the view in regard to punishment as 
not being eternal is maintained by Scandinavia's 
greatest mythological student, the late learned 
N. M. Petersen. 

And now a few words in partial recapitulation 
of the preceding pages. 

1. There is a pre -chaotic world, in the south part 
of which^ Muspelheim, Surt (the swarthy, dark, un- 
known) reigns with flaming sword, and in the north 
part of which 'Nifllieim issues forth the venom- 
rivers, the Elivogs, indicating that Nidhug, the 
dragon in Hvergelmer, is co-eternal with Surt ; 
that is, the good and the evil existed from ever- 
lasting. 

2. Chaotic Ymer is produced by the blending 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. 175 

of cold and beat, fire and venom, sent forth into 
Ginungagap by Surfc and Nidhug. Odin and the 
gods are the beneficent forces and elements in 
Nature. They separate themselves from the giants, 
which are the evil and destructive elements, and 
conquer tbem by their divine power. 

3. Then conies Cosmos. Odin, Vile, and Ye 
create the present world from the body of the 
slain Ymer. 

4. The government of the world is in the power 
of the Asgard gods, while they are more or less 
subject to the decrees of the mighty norns, the 
weird sisters, dispensers of time and fate. All 
that is good, beautiful, and true conies from the 
gods, but the giants also manifest their power in 
all the evil, disturbing, and destructive elements 
of Nature. The gods circumscribe but do not 
destroy the power of the giants. The world-life 
is a ceaseless struggle between these opposite 
forces. The gods strive to defend what advan- 
tage they have, but the giants are continually 
seeking to defeat them and bring ruin upon them. 
The gods frequently employ the giants to elevate 
and fortify themselves, but this is a mistake on 
their part, and tbey thereby only in the end weaken 
their own power. The cunning giant-god Loke, 
the de^•il or Mephistophiles of Scandinavian pagan* 



176 ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 

ism whom the gods have adopted and taken inte 
Asgard, deceives and destroys them. The power 
of the giants keeps increasing and grows more and 
more threatening to the gods and to the whole 
world. 

5. In liarmony with the doctrine of some Chris- 
tian Churches, that wickedness is to increase until 
the last trumpet sounds, so in the Scandinavian 
religion the world grows worse and worse. It 
finally comes first to the death of Balder and then 
to the great struggle in Engnarok, where both 
parties summon all their slrength for a decisive 
battle, and where gods and giants mutually slay 
each other. In this internecine feud the world 
and the noble ash Ygdrasil are consumed with 
flames hurled by the mysterious Surt, that is, by 
the same original power whence came the first 
sparks of life in the pre-chaotic world. 

6. The world is destroyed only to rise again in 
a more glorious condition. In the reconstruction 
and regeneration of the world the victor\- of the 
gods over the giants is complete. After Ragnarok, 
Odin, Thor, Frey, &c., are no more as individual 
divinities, but they are all united in that supreme 
being, that one who is greater than Odin, the one 
whom Hyndla's lay in the Elder Edda dare not 
name, and whom few look far enough to see — that 



THE HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSOK 177 

god who is dimly discerned in the primeval be- 
ginuing, who remains victorious in Ragnarok, and 
who is from everlasting to everlasting. When that 
mighty one comes to tlie great judgment, then the 
cursed Nidhug, the gnawer in the dark, who has so 
long tormented the souls of the wicked, sinks, to- 
gether with death and all piin and evil, into the 
unfathomable abyss never to rise again. Such was 
in brief the religion that fostered the enterprising 
spirit of the grand Viking age in the North. It is 
not unworthy of a modest place beside the other 
systems of heathen religions. It certainly inspired 
the ancient Scandinavians to live an upright and 
brave life. It has many '^ broken lights'' of Chris- 
tianity in it. The similarity in many parts only 
makes us wonder bow it grew. Anyhow it saves 
us from having a low idea of the character of our 
rude ancestors. 



POSITIVISM AS A RELIGION. 



XL 



By the Eev. Professor J. EADFORD THOMSON, M.A., 

New College, London. 

THEEE is a curious irony in the fact, which will 
be for ever memorable, that the man who w^as 
the very incai-nation of the scientific and secuhir 
spirit of the nineteenth century is yet the inven- 
tor of the only new religion to which (with the odd 
exception of Mormonism) this century has given 
birth. M. Comte was the author of Positivism, 
which is the doctrine that we have to do only with 
facts coming under exact observation, and with 
generalisations from those facts, i.e., with phy.sical 
'Maw^s" deriving their authority from experience. 
Such facts and generalisations constitute, according 
to Comtism — which in this simply fixes and formu- 
lates a tendency of our times — the sum of human 
knowledge. Evidently the natural and proper 
outcome of Positivism is the negation of religion, 



J. RADFORD THOMSON, M.A. 179 

for the doctrines of religion and its practices relate 
to the supersensible, the spiritual, the Divine. 

Yet there is a Positivist religion, the " Religion 
of Humanity,'' with a creed, a church, a priesthood, 
a ritual, more or less developed and concrete. How 
can we account for a reliction beino^ tacked on to 
a scientific doctrine which seems to preclude its 
possibility? or illogically evolved out of such a 
docirine ? There is a general answer, viz., that 
n)en must and will have a religion, that it is not in 
human nature to be satisfied without a religion. 
And there is a special answer, viz., that the 
founder of Positivism became himself dissatisfied 
with his own secularism. 

Comte must have imposed upon himself when he 
referred to his own experience the saying of Alfred 
de Vigny — '' Qu'est ce qu'une grande vie ? Une 
pensee de la jeunesse realisee par Tage.'' (What is 
a great life ? A thought of youth, realised, made 
actual, in after-life.) No man's life was ever more 
clearly cleft into two distinct and antagonistic por- 
tions than was that of Comte. M. Littre was the 
most illustrious disciple of the great Positivist in 
his first and scientific staore — in that stage when 
metaphysics and theology were repudiated. But 
Littre broke ofi* from the master when he publicly 
approved and advocated political absolutism, when 



180 POSITIVISM AS A EELIGION. 

be tauglit a fanciful doctrine of tlje Trinity, when 
he practised and sanctioned prayer. Many of 
Comte's followers '^ walked no more with him " 
wben he became dissatisfied with those secular 
and negative doctrines which were so specially 
distinctive of the earlier part of bis philosophic 
career. Thus we have two distinct parties, giving 
two distinct representations of Comte's personal 
history, two distinct views of the '^ chief end of 
man:'' both parties, however, claiming to be ex- 
positors of Positivism. The reader of Robinet has 
quite a diff'erent impression of the master from that 
received by the reader of Littre. The former 
glorifies Comte as the founder of the true reli- 
gion, and exalts ''Ste. Clotilde " to highest honour, 
whilst painting the conduct of Madame Comte and 
of M. Littre in the darkest colours. To the great 
lexicographer, on the other hand, the later years of 
Comte seem to have been blighted by an irrational 
and infatuated forsaking of true science for false 
religion. "M. Comte," says Littre, "at a given 
moment, believing that he was simply developing 
the Positive philosophy, changed his method. The 
two sections of his teaching were manifestly two 
distinct doctrines, having different and irrecon- 
cilable points of departure. He exchanged the 
objective for the subjective method." Mysticism, 



J. RADFORD THOMSON, M.A. 181 

in Littre's judgment, became the dominant in- 
fluence, as his career approached its close. Amongst 
other points of divergence, Littre hays stress upon 
Comte's contention that the intellect ouoht to be 
subject to the heart, and that feeling, &c., should 
be attributed to the material world — a dogma which 
is naturally deemed a return from the Positive to 
the Theological stnge of belief. 

The l)est known English Positivists are warmly 
in sympathy with Comte's religious teaching. Thus 
Mr. F. Harrison claims that Positivism '' belongs in 
the true sense of that word to the spiritual, and not 
to the materialistic philosophy," and even holds 
that " the scope, function, and parts of religion 
have never been completely examined until this 
was done by the founder of Positivism." 

There can be no question that in his later years 
Comte insisted with reiteration and with earnest- 
ness that religion was the crown of his philosophic 
edifice. From his " Eight Circulars " we quote the 
following sentences in confirmation of this state- 
ment : — ^^ Having devoted the whole of my life to 
the task of basing sound philosophy, and, as a con- 
sequence, true religion, upon the whole body of the 
sciences," &c. "Positive philosophy originates in 
real science, only that it may end in true religion." 
"It is in the Positive religion alone that resides 



182 POSITIVISM AS A RELIGION. 

the sj'steinatic force which can keep in check, 
not only the retrograde inclinations of the various 
governments, but the anarchical tendencies of their 
populations, prescribing simultaneously order in 
the name of progress, and progress in the name 
of order." 

It is not always understood that Positivism, in 
its full development, is far more than a scientific 
method : it is a Religion and a Church. When Mr. 
R. Congreve, on the 19th of January 1859, in- 
augurated in London an ecclesiastical organisation 
he expressly affirmed : — '^ We are not a philoso- 
phical school, but a Church. . . . We worship 
humanity in and through her noblest servant and 
organ, Auguste Comte." It is very noticeable 
that both master and disciples have been anxious 
to maintain a kind of continuity with the Christian 
Church in its highly organised medieval form. 
The system is designated Human Catholicism in 
contrast with Roman Catholicism. It is main- 
tained that the future of religion lies between 
Romanism and Positivism. '' The religion of the 
past is our real competitor. Beside it there is 
nothing in the field." Positivism has its Trinity 
■ — Humanity, the World, Space ! The Comtist 
idea of religion is a combination of the Christian 
and the scientific. Thus Mr. F. Harrison says : — 



J. RADFOKD THOMSON, M.A. 183 

"We acknowledge a religion, of which the creed 
shall be science, of which the Faith, Hope, Charity, 
shall be real, not transcendental ; earthly, not 
heavenly — a religion, in a word, which is en- 
tirely human, in its evidences, in its purposes, in 
its sanctions and appeals." 

In many particulars the system of Comte is 
copied from the old Catholicism. It has its Calen- 
dar, Festivals, and Saints' Days ; its Sacraments 
and Priesthood. The intention of the founder was 
that his religion should penetrate the social life 
of maukind, meeting men, as Catholicism aims 
at doing, at every point. Little has been done 
towards realising these plans ; the temples, which 
are to be turned, not towards the East, but to- 
wards Paris, have yet to be built, the elaborate 
order of priests has yet to be instituted, the Pan- 
theon has yet to be founded. 

It is true that some distinguished men who 
have come under Comte's influence as a scientific 
thinker have refused to accept his religious teach- 
ing. M. Littre in Fraice, and Mr. J. S. Mill and 
Mr. G. H. Lewes in England, may be mentioned 
as occupying this position. Those who take this 
position have Positivist tendencies, but reject the 
masters later and cherished doctrines; for them 
Comte is an authority in scientific method, but a 



184 POSITIVISM AS A RELIGION. 

fanatic in religion ; they will follow his philosophy, 
but will have nothing to do with his Church. On 
tlie other hand, Dr. Bridges " accepts the conception 
of ail organised Spiritual power, of a Positivist 
Church." He explains: — "For us the religion of 
humanity means something that will bind together 
all ages, all classes, and all nations, in a common 
faith and a common worship. We recognise the 
need, too, of something analogous to the spiritual 
authority which has directed the faith and the 
worship of all previous religions ; and which, often 
as it has abused its power, has far more often used 
it beneficially and nobly." 

Dismissing from our attention the one-sided 
Comtists, let us consider the beliefs and practices 
inculcated by Comte himself, and acknowledged 
by his thorough-going disciples to be authorita- 
tively binding upon themselves. The religion pre- 
scribed by Comte is the religion of humanity ; it 
substitutes for a Supreme Creator and Ruler the 
human race, or rather those members of the human 
race who by their character and services have de- 
served general esteem. The great and good of 
past generations are regarded by the Positivists 
with relioious reverence, and are exalted to the 
position rather of deities than of saints. 

In place of the " lords many and gods many " 



J. RADFORD THOMSON, M.A. 185 

who have so long usurped the throne of the human 
heart — in place of the Living and Eternal Supreme 
Himself — the prophet of the new reh'gion bids us 
adore humanity as the sovereign and only deity. 

Extinctis Diis, Deoque, successit Humanitas. 
By humanity, according to Comte's final definition, 
we are to understand '^ the unbroken whole of con- 
verging beings " (Fensemble continu des ^tres con- 
vergents). And as the majority of the human 
race, and almost all who have made a reputation 
for great services, are numbered among the hosts 
of the departed, we must form our conception of 
humanity by studying the character of those who 
have gone before us. " The fundamental principle 
of human order is this : — the living are essentially 
and increasingly governed by the dead." 

It is not an easy thing to grasp clearly the 
Comtist conception of humanity as the deity whom 
we are called upon to worship. There is vague- 
ness about Comte's own language : — " Towards 
humanity, who is for us the only true great being, 
we, the conscious elements of whom she is com- 
posed, shall henceforth direct every aspect of our 
life, individual or collective. Our thoughts will 
be devoted to the knowledge of humanity, our 
affections to her love, our actions to her service." 
Nor do we gain much in clearness by pondering 

13 



186 POSITIVISM AS A KELIGION. 

the language of Comte's Englisli disciple, Mr. F. 
Harrison : — " The entire system of Positive belief 
points to the existence of a single dominant 
power, whose real and incontestable attributes 
appeal directly to the affections in no less measure 
than they appeal directly to the intellect." 

Such, however, is the Positivist object of adora- 
tion. ''Under the permanent inspiration of uni- 
versal love, the business of doctrine, woiship, and 
discipline is to study, to honour, and to serve 
the Great Being, the crown of all human exist- 
ence." To make the worship more real and 
profitable, the faithful are encouraged to personify 
humanity. Especially in private worship, ivonian 
is to be adored. A man should offer Avorship 
to his mother, his wdfe, his daughter. Comte 
himself adored as personifications of humanity 
his mother, his friend Clotilde de Vaux, and his 
estimable female housekeeper. An English Posi- 
tivist asks : — '' What is the most universal con- 
stituent of this composite spirituality ? The 
answer is clear. It is in woman that we find it; 
and therefore it is that, as the most universal 
and the most powerful of all modifying agents, 
woman is, in our religion, the representative of 
liumanit3\" 

Comte was in the habit of writing in the most 



J. EADFORD THOMSON, M.A. 187 

extravagant terms of tlie person to whose influence 
be attributed his ''moral regeneration." Tlius, 
after the death of Clotilde de Vaux, he referred 
in one of his circulars to his place of abode in 
the following language: — ''Especially sacred did 
this dwelling become to me ... as the scene of 
the moral regeneration I experienced during one 
unparalleled year under the angelic impulse which 
will preside over the whole of my second life. . . . 
These holy walls, on which is imprinted for ever 
the image I adore, have helped me in my daily 
development of the private worship of the best 
personification of the true Great Being." 

And in the dedication to Clotilde's memory of 
his Positive Polity, Comte confesses : — " As has 
ever been the case where afi*ection has been well 
bestowed, your strengthening influence has spon- 
taneously made me more affectionate to my friends, 
more indulgent to my enemies, more gentle to my 
inferiors, more submissive to those above me." 
Such language is by no means unreasonable ; but 
Comte attributed to Clotilde's influence far more 
than moral improvement. He traced to this source 
the final development, which w^as indeed almost a 
reversal, of his whole system : — " Through you 
alone it is that I have been able to stir that re- 
^.ction of the heart upon the intellect without 



188 POSITIVISM AS A RELIGION. 

which my mi.^sion would have failed. But for 
your gentle influence my long philosophic train- 
ing, even though seconded by sestlietic pursuits, 
could not have enabled me to realise the true 
systematic preponderance of universal love, the 
principal and final characteristic of Positivisna, 
and which more than any other will ensure its 
general acceptance." 

As to what constitutes worship, we find a diver- 
gence of opinion prevalent among adherents of the 
Positivist faith. "We do not find complete har- 
mony between some of the fervid exhortations of 
Mr. Congreve and some of the commonplace, every- 
day sentiments expressed by Mr. Harrison. Ac- 
cording to the latter, ^^ Cult does not mean worship, 
but whatever stimulates the sense of duty and 
quickens the noblest emotions." Upon this show- 
ing, the Positivist Opno-Kela takes the form of com- 
memoration of great musicians, as Mozart and 
Beethoven, or of " the noble and healthful mediaeval 
practice of pilgrimages or visits to the graves of 
distinguished men," such as Bacon, Harvey, Milton, 
Hampden, Cromwell, and William of Orange. One 
is reminded of the famous passage in the Apo- 
crypha commencing with the sonorous invitation, 
*^Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers 
which begat us ! ^' 



J. RADFOHD THOMSON, M.A. 189 

Comte felt the necessity of embodying the new 
faith in a living and social form, of investing it 
with the permanent attraction of ritual, sacraments, 
and various prescribed observances. Thus in the 
preface to the Positive Polity he contends : — " By 
this series of institutions (i.e., the worship of 
guardian angels, and the sacraments). Proved 
religion shows itself capable of superseding Ee- 
vealed religion at all points, depriving the latter 
of its claims to moral no less than to political 
superiority." 

Eeligion, however, is not only a worship, it is a 
moral power exercised over human life. The best 
moral characteristic of the Positivist religion is that 
unselfishness and devotedness to human welfare 
which it has borrowed from Christianity. One of 
its advocates professes : — ^^ In the principle of all 
action for the disciples of our religion — sacrifice of 
self for the good of others, embodied in the great 
formula of Positive morality. Live for others — I 
find the one all-powerful compensation, at once for 
the evils of our condition and for the hopes we 
renounce." The followers of Comte are in the 
habit of pronouncing Christian morality especially 
selfish, of representing Christians as seeking their 
own good as the chief aim ; and they contrast with 
this self-seeking the disinterestedness of their faith 



190 POSITIVISiM AS A RELIGION. 

and prayers. But a litlle reflection will show that 
the Christian precept, '^ Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bour as thyself,'^ is a wiser, juster, and more eff'ec- 
tive rule. 

There is incongruity between the confident and 
almost boastful claims of the Positivists and the 
actual progress which the sect has made after so 
many years of promulgation. They speak in 
sonorous language of '' the majestic march of our 
religion/' and of the " rapidity with which humanity 
is moving on her course towards her visible instal- 
lation." Yet, although Mr. Congreve used this 
language at the opening of the year 1881, we find 
him on the following New Years Day noticing the 
disappearance of one of the two Positivist centres 
in Paris, and that the one with which he was most 
in sympathy ; and recording that two sacraments 
had been celebrated in London in the course of 
1 88 1, viz., one of initiation, and one of mnrriage ! 
It has been admitted that outside of France and 
Britain the adherents of the Positivist religion can 
be reckoned only by units. 

It is a pleasure to acknowledge what of good 
there is in the religion of humanity. No Christian 
can regard this singular development of the spirit 
of our aoe with unkindness or bitterness. In 
Comte himself there was so much of egotism, 



J. ilADFOKD THOMSON, M.A. 191 

conceit, and bigotry, that it is not easy to do 
justice to his enthusiasm and benevolence. In 
theory he professed universal love and goodwill, 
and certainly in his later years he aimed at cherish- 
ing such aflfections and desires as are an ornament 
and glory of human nature. And one cannot but 
sympathise with his desire to elevate the higher 
affections of men to a just position, in his rehgion 
and in the daily practice of Positivists. The best 
known English Positivists command our respect, 
both by their protest against materialism in belief 
and secularism in practice, and also b}^ their bold 
and constant advocacy of righteous, peaceful, and 
unselfish policy in the relations of civil and national 
life. 

But our admiration of much in the teaching and 
the practical life of our Positivist neighbours does 
not blind us to the fact that what of good there is 
in them is owing almost entirely to the religion of 
Christ, which has entered into the structure of the 
society of which they form a part, nor does it blind 
us to the fact that the peculiarities of Positivist 
doctrine are in themselves indefensible and mis- 
leadino;. 

In criticising the '^Eeligion of Humanity'' we 
encounter the difficulty arising from the origin of 
the system as a supplement to scientific Positivism. 



192 POSITIVISM AS A KKLIGION. 

It seems to us most unreasonable to exclude from 
religion tlie supramundane and omnipresent Power. 
Comte himself tells us that ^^Eeligion has not 
to do with that order which is higher and more 
comprehensive than humanity, and which science 
forbids us to personify." Here is a fundamental 
metaphysical difference between the Positivist and 
the Theist. The former admits that humanity does 
not account for the universe, or even for itself. 
And yet he will only look around upon the living, 
and hack upon the dead, instead of looking up to 
the Almighty and Omniscient Being who is the 
source and reason of all existence. The religion 
of humanity goes too far for the scientist, who 
acknowledges only the phenomenal and experi- 
ential; it does not go far enough for the spiritual 
philosopher, not to say the Cliristian. 

Accordingly, the Positivist deity is an abstrac- 
tion, towards which we cannot feel those sentiments 
which go out towards a living, conscious, personal 
being. And when the Positivist undertakes, for 
practical purposes, to personify his humanity, he 
necessarily selects types characterised by human 
imperfection. It needs an overpowering imagina- 
tion, nay, it needs the abnegation of reason, to 
render religious homage to the illustrious dead 
whose memory we revere, to the living women 



J. RADFORD THOMSON, M.A. 193 



whose virtues we prize, but with whose infirmities 
we are familiar. 

Only a Supreme and Perfect Object of worship 
can issue a law which deserves universal and un- 
hesitating obedience, or can promulgate a gospel 
which shall bring joy and hope to all human 
hearts. The collective goodness and imperfections, 
wisdom and folly, of the past cannot furnish us 
with an authoritative rule of conduct, or with 
sufficient moral sanctions to secure obedience. 
And judging from the tone of such Positivist 
writers and moralists as George Eliot, there is 
ofi^ered by this earth-born creed no pardon for the 
past, no peace for the conscience, and therefore 
little inspiration for future self-denial and devotion, 
for the benefit of the poor, sinful, and sorrowful 
sons of men. 

And as Positivism limits our survey within the 
contracted horizon of humanity, so does it fail to 
lift the veil from the future and the unseen. It 
yields one hope — the hope that every good man's 
work may be serviceable to the coming generations. 
But upon the destiny of the individual and of the 
race, it is dumb. Christianity, on the other hand, 
allows and encourages the inspiring hope that a 
good man s life shall be the seed of spiritual pro- 
gress and happiness on earth. And it adds to this 



194 POSITIVISM AS A KELIGION. 

hope the glorious revelation of a '^new heaven and 
a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness/' and 
lends to this glowing prospect the added cbarm 
which is connected with an assured, a conscious, 
a personal immortality. 



THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 



T 



XII. 

By the Eev. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 
HE following thouohts are submitted as bearinof 

o o o 

upon the great religious questions of the 
present time ; more particularly in relation to the 
rationalistic assumption, that all the religions rest 
on identical foundations, or grow out of the same 
root-principles of human nature. Hence, though 
some of the religions may appear nobler than the 
others, yet this is only in outward semblance or 
appearance, as all alike are developments on a 
purely natural basis of the religious principles, 
which, oriofinal or derived, are to be found in 
humanity. This position the writer of the follow- 
ing chapters entirely denies. This denial is based 
on the fact, that the Religions of Humanity belong 
to very diverse stages in the history of mankind, 
and their worth and value in relation to humanity 



196 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

depend essentially upon the stage to which they 
belong. 

Three such stages are clearly inevitable, and will 
be readily recognised as actually existing platforms 
or planes in the life of mankind. Auguste Comte 
has told us about his religious, his metaphysical, 
and his positive stages ; but these are mauifestly 
artificial, and like other French theories, are too 
obviously made for the convenience of the writer. 
But that there is a natural, savage, purely animal, 
or elementary stage in the history of humanity is 
surely obvious enough. In it man is to be found 
before he arrives at the second, or moral stage, in 
which there grows out of the interaction of the 
moral relations of man to man, a moral platform or 
plane, in which men substantially civilised are 
bound together by a network of moral relations 
which they conform to, not compulsorily, but by 
the force of habit and the internal sense of moral 
obligation revealed in human nature. No doubt 
this moral plane, in actually existing communities, 
is rather in a state of growth or hecoming than 
fully realised and perfect. We see this in the 
existence, in all communities, of a number of 
human beings who are held in subordination by 
external compulsion, or by physical restraint, 
whose obedience to moral law is consequently 



THE REV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 197 

only partial and compulsory. And so long as 
this state of things exists — and it does exist even 
amongst the peoples most advanced in civilisation 
— we mark the imperfection of this moral plat- 
form of humanity, and are reminded of what Locke 
says, somewhat cynically, in his tractate on the 
"Conduct of the Understanding," that "man 
is capable of becoming a reasonable creature.'' 
Kant, the thinker of Konigsberg, has done most, 
more especially in his ethical works, to glorify 
this phase of human nature as the highest mani- 
festation of humanity. Yet no one has done more 
to reveal its imperfection, to show its essential 
earthliness of condition ; that unless man can 
hope to raise himself above this moral plane and 
attain nearer to that ideal towards which it points ; 
but to which on this side of time it can never reach, 
his position is a hopeless one, and the thinkers 
working on such premises have no alternative but 
to fall back on the pessimism of Schopenhauer and 
Hartmann. 

The moral plane, however, we hold, necessarily 
implies a higher. The thinker to whom we have 
referred as doing so much to exalt the moral plane 
of humanity, has shown that we are justified in 
inferring from the facts of man's moral nature the 
existence of God and the immortality of the soul ; 



198 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

the former as the only means of uniting and re- 
conciling man's striving to obey the inward law of 
duty with the external order of nature and her on- 
ofoinors according to the law of cause and effect : 
the latter as postulating the continued existence of 
man's moral being, as the only guarantee of his 
bcino; able to reach forward to the real aim and 
ideal of that being and the fulfilment of the law 
of duty. 

But surely we cannot stop at these bare and 
va^me abstractions. We are, as Kant has shown 
us, on the basis of real moral life and action in 
making these inferences, and on this basis we must 
go further and postulate the practicability of reach- 
ing the Chief Good — the aim and ideal of mans 
nature, both individually and socially. But if the 
individual aim be union with the Divine Nature 
(2 Peter i. 4), the social aim is nothing less than 
that Civitas Dei — the City of God which floated 
before the mind of Augustine and other great 
Christian thinkers. Now this reaching forward 
to become ^'partakers of the Divine Nature,'' to 
become '' members of the general assembly and 
Church of the first-born," is a state of things which 
may be anticipated here, as the lives of multitudes 
of the best of men have shown ; though it may only 
be perfected when we reach the Golden City in 



THE REV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 199 

very deed and truth. This, then, is that third and 
highest plane of which we are in search — the phane 
of the spiritual. Man may not only be bonud by 
a network of moral re]ationshi[)S to his fellow-mei], 
and live from inward principle, apart from external 
compulsion, in obedience to the moral law written 
on the heart ; but he may also rise to communion 
Avith the unseen ; live now as realising the actual 
presence of God, and thus '^ook'' not at the tbings 
which are seen, but at the things wljich are ''not 
seen." And it is precisely this wonderful appre- 
hension of the ''powers of the world to come,'' 
which constitutes the spirituality of earth, and 
enables man to look forward to a still higher 
spiritual condition in the future. 

The Apostle in Hebrews xii. anticipates such a 
lofty sociological development when he says (verse 
22) — "Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the 
city of the living God,'^ &c. &c. ; and we contend 
that he here describes the spiritual stage or plane 
as reached noio, in anticipation ; though it will only 
be fully attained in the spiritual life-relations of 
the future. 

Now the religions of the world connect them- 
selves with, and belong to, these successive stages 
or planes in the life and history of humanity. All 
the religions, save Christianity and the religion of 



200 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

Israel, belong to the natural stage. They do so 
from their polytheistic character, and from their 
manifold contradictions to the higher moral rela- 
tions of humanity. The religion of Israel is the 
only religion which closely approximates in its 
principles and relations to the moral plane. As a 
religion, it is fully in harmony with this plane. 

It is not maintained that the moral relations of 
humanity depend upon religion, though naturally 
they are closely connected with it, and the religion 
may raise or degrade man ethically. Morality is 
inseparable from humanity, and inevitably emerges 
in a more or less perfect state from the relations of 
man to man as a social being. We believe that 
revealed ethics is as inconsequent as revealed logic, 
and that morality is not a religious product ; 
although, as we have said, it is greatly affected by 
the character of the religion accepted by the com- 
munity, whose morality is under consideration. 
Man, intellectual, moral, and religious, is no doubt 
an inseparable unity ; but the moral and intellectual 
developments of his nature are not an outcome of 
the religious ; any more than the religious man is 
derived from the intellectual or moral man. All three 
are original developments of humanity, and do not 
necessarily depend the one upon the other, although, 
as has been said, there is abundant interaction be- 



THE REV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 201 

tween these great original principles of human 
nature. 

I. In uature-religions there is, first, identification 
with nature. Her impulses are in man's blood. 
He feels himself at one with uature. His appetites, 
passions, and desires are implanted by nature, and 
the gratification of them is natural. Hence while 
he feels the presence of Divine power, and the 
instinct of worship reveals itself in the depths of 
his spirit, he deifies the whole of nature around 
him, and mixes to(>ether the lowest and the hio^hest. 
Such states of religious feeling, as we have seen, 
must needs rest upon a Pantheistic basis — viz., 
that the all by which he is surrounded is Divine, 
in all its varied forms and impulses. Hence the 
worship of Pan and Bacchus amongst the Greeks, 
and the surrender to wild and sensuous impulses 
as the outcome of the inspiration of the god. But 
in a second sta^e, the all resolves itself into a 
variety of tendencies and impulses. The thought- 
ful and rational elements took form under Pallas 
Athene ; the gross and sensual impulses were under 
the patronage of Bacchus and Venus, and the wor- 
shipper could pass from the service of the one to 
that of the other without feeling much the presence 
of moral opposites, or realising the contradiction 
that was inherent in his life. But as man ad- 

14 



202 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

vanced in moral culture, these contradictions began 
to emerge, and endeavours were made to solve or 
remove them. This was partly attained in the Greek 
religion by the Monotheistic tendency, in which Zeus 
became the father of gods and men, by tlie expul- 
sion of the immoral elements from his character, the 
reconciliation of the warring inhabitants of Olym- 
pus through his control and mediation, and thus a 
solution of the contradiction was in some measure 
reached. But still in all the heathen religions this 
reconciliation was far from complete. The dark 
shadow of arbitrary mindless Fate rested over the 
god^^, as it rests in the form of an inevitable neces- 
sity over the naturalistic schemes of modern times. 
Presently, moreover, the childish character of the 
popular mythology became apparent, and it lost its 
hold over men's minds ; while we see howin Rome the 
darker and oloomier svstems of the East took hold 
of the human spirit. Man shrinks from the absolute 
emptiness of unbelief just as in the case of the 
scientific spiritists of our own time. Accordingly 
the asceticism of the East, the Mithras' mysteries, 
(fee, were accepted, in the hope that they would 
afi'ord some remedy for the darkness and emptiness 
within. In these circumstances, the nature-wor- 
ship of former times fell into disrepute, and 
educated by philosophy and art, the ancients 



THE REV. W. NICOLSOX, M.A. 203 

beofan, so far at lea^^t as the m re eultured were 
concerned, to reject the nature-worship of their 
ancestors. The consolidation of the moral plane, 
throiio'h the ordered law and social order of 
Greek and Eoman life, doubtless did much to con- 
tribute towards this. Men felt their religions to 
be beneath them, while they ought to be above 
them. Socrates did much, reasoning on the founda- 
tions of the moral plane, to determine what the 
characteristics of a moral religion must be. Especi- 
ally do we see it in such dialogues as the Euthy- 
jphro, where Socrates analyses the popular ideas of 
morality to show their fallacy. The sacred is 
show^n to be that which is sacred in itself; what is 
founded iu right and justice, and it is shown that 
this must be ag;reeable to the gods because of its 
essential character. In the Apology again he ap- 
peals to conscience as the arbiter of right and wrong, 
and not to the gods. The heroism of morality 
is urged in the Crito and the Phdddo^ in the asser- 
tion by Socrates of the duty of following conscience 
at all hazards, even to the death. In the Gorgias 
the pursuit of the chief good — the summiim honum 
is brought before us. It is not too much to sav 
that the moral dialogues of Plato are specially 
directed to the confirmation, completion, and estab- 
lishment of that which we have named the moral 



204 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

plane — the moral ties and principles by wLicli man- 
kind are bound together. 

II. A moral religion, therefore, of the character- 
istics of which we are now in search, must be a 
religion wholly in harmony with tlie moral plane. 
The elements of a moral belief are unfolded to us 
with marvellous acuteness in these dialogues to which 
we have just adverted. But what is the leading 
principle of these elements as set forth by Socrates? 
Undoubtedly that which he nicknamed his demon 
« — the power within which taught him how to live. 
This is no other than the voice of conscience — the 
moral law within unconditionally commanding, — 
**the superior principle of reflection or conscience 
in every man," as Bishop l^utler names it in his 
first sermon on Human Nature. Whatever de- 
ficiencies may exist in the Kantean ethics, there 
can be little donbt that their strong point 
lies in the vindication of the authority of con- 
science and its identification with the individual ; 
his acceptance, so to speak, of the moral law as a 
datum of the consciousness, as the law of his own 
being unconditionally commanding, or what he other- 
wise expressed under the crabbed form of the cate- 
gorical imperative. In this he agrees with our own 
great moralist. Bishop Butler, to w^hose expressions, 
indicative of the authority of conscience, we have 



THE EEV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 205 

just referred. CurrespondiDg to this principle, the 
high place of power in a moral religion is the ^'Lord 
of the conscience." This has been called the ^' vice- 
gerent/' the '' witness for God in man/' and the 
expressions are not at all too strong. In this lies 
the burning point of the moral argument for the 
existence of God. It must be taken for granted 
that the Creator and Disposer of the universe is 
also the ^* Lord of the conscience/' and thus only are 
the '^chief good" and the ^'chief end" of man attain- 
able. With this is closely connected the argument 
for the immortality of the soul, on the ground that 
man's moral action is not an absurdity ; but that a 
holy life — a life in harmony with the dictates of 
morality — is practicable, and not a self-evident 
absurdity. The service of the Good will not be 
eno^aged in, if the aims and ends it brinos before 
men are unattainable. Moreover, in the unity we 
have referred to, which we are bound to postulate 
between the Creator and Preserver and the '' Lord 
of the conscience," we have another principle of a 
religion occupying the basis of the moral, viz., God 
is One. Subsequently, when we come to examine 
the spiritual plane, we shall see how the Trinity 
in the Godhead has to do with, and is equally 
natural to, the spiritual plane ; as the assertion 
of the Divine Unity is essential to the moral 



206 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

platform. The moral, as we have seen, cannot 
rise from earth. It points douhtle.^s to heaven, 
it lifts up the ''Lord of the conscience" as tlje 
'' God who made the heavens and the earth," 
but it has no means within itself of establishing 
such doctrines ; they are postulates, or necessary 
inferences. 

A third principle, in addition to the attributing 
to God of moral attributes, is that in a moral 
relio:ion the service must also be moraL It can 
tolerate no outrages upon human or paternal feel- 
ing as, for example, the sacrifice of Iphigenia. It 
must also present none of those orgies or cor- 
ruptions which we have seen to belong to the 
heathen religions. But, furthermore, the very aim 
and end of such, a religion will be moraL It will 
seek the perfection of man according to moral prin- 
ciples, or in other words, as it has a conception of 
what men ought to be and ought to do, it can never 
rest satisfied until the ideal thus raised be fully 
realised. 

III. Closely connected with each other, though 
apparently indeed in polar antagonism, are the 
twin conceptions of Laiu and Freedom, It is 
not too much to ?ay that without tliese con- 
ceptions, morality, in what we have called the 
human sense of the term, could not exist. It 



THE KEV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 207 

might exist without doubt in the Spencerian sense 
of the term ; for in that sense there is only to be 
considered the welfare of the animal, as individual 
and one of a herd ; the practical rules for which 
in man and brute — if there be any difference be- 
tween man and brute — are deductions from their 
natural history. In such a thoroughly external 
view it is more than doubtful whether the ques- 
tion of freedom can be raised in the case of man 
any more than in that of the brute — and the out- 
come must be a pure Necessitarianism. Law is 
an external thing, derived from the persistence 
of force, which, as we have seen, is all in all. 
Out of force, as a mere brute necessity — and the 
evolutionist first principle goes no further — it does 
not appear how we can reach either God or religion, 
in the sense in which they have been hitherto 
understood. But if we take the humanistic view, 
with w^hich we were occupied, the case is different ; 
moral liberty and law in close relation, but yet in 
polar opposition to each other, presently emerge. 
Law— the sense of oblig^ation, the consciousness of 
duty — is the primary and central fact of the m(^ral 
consciousness. 

But closely allied to this, is the conception of 
moral liberty, without which also morality, in the 
human sense of the term, could not exist. There 



208 THE OXE PUEELY MORAL RELIGION. 

lies, however, at the bottom of this conception 
another, with which we shall ag^aiii have occasion 
to deal. This is the conception, that man as a 
moral creature is not under a brute necessity ; but 
an independent, self-responsible, moral being. He 
is not independent, of course, of the ^'L-Td of the 
conscience,'^ of the Being or Power who has consti- 
tuted him what he is ; but in connection with this 
principle of freedom, he has been constituted a re- 
sponsible creature, and within the latitude of that 
responsibility, he is a morally independent being. 
He recognises the moral law as the root-principle 
of his own being, adopts it as the maxim of his 
life, and postulates conformity to it, as possible 
and practicable. This last is the Kantean concep- 
tion of freedom as connected with the autonomous 
or self-lawed character of the will — the autonomy 
of the will, as the philosopher names it. In this 
sense tiiere is a social as well as an individual auto- 
nomy ; as when a free people through thi^ir chosen 
representatives, constitute the laws which are to 
rule the national life. Freedom has, how^ever, been 
understood in another or Pelagian sense as the power 
to conform to the law of one's being, or to violate 
that law. There can be no doubt but that such a 
powxr exists in a moral being, but whether this 
view is to be designated freedom is more than 



THE REV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 209 

doubtful. If we take the power to do what we 
will as equivalent to freedom — and this has been 
done by Jonathan Edwards and others — then in 
that sense a man is free to leap over a precipice. 
But such an act speedily ends his freedom as a 
living being. In like manner, it may be said 
that a man is free to violate the moral law — to 
go against the sense of obligation of which he is 
conscious. But in that case he adopts as a maxim 
a principle contrary to the law of his being, ^.e., 
the law of conscience, which is the authoritative 
guide of his life ; delivers himself up to the do- 
minion of his brute appetites and propensities, and 
tliiis destroys, so far as that act or series of acts is 
concerned, the various foundations of his own moral 
nature. He becomes, in Scriptural parlance, the 
bondman of sin, the slave of his propensities. 

IV. Returning, however, to the central line of 
our discussion — the characteristics of a moral reli- 
gion — the points which have just been elicited in 
reference to the opposite but related principles of 
liberty and law, will be seen to throw considerable 
light upon what these characteristics must be. We 
have seen that in a religion on the purely moral 
plane, there can only be one God — the Lord of the 
conscience. If man's moral action as a concrete 
fact, or series of facts, be rational, its aims attain- 



210 THE ONE 1»URELY MORAL RELIGION* 

able, and man's life be not a stark, staring absurdity, 
it postulates or takes for granted that the Lord of 
the conscience is He who made and rules the 
heavens and the earth ; furthermore, that the con- 
tinuation of existence necessary for the accom- 
plishment of the aims of the moral law is a fact ; 
in other w^ords, that the soul is immortal. 

Again, the reverence due to the Lord of the 
conscience, and the adoration or worship due to 
Him as the embodiment or expression of this 
reverence, are also fully in harmony with the 
moral plane which is the foundation of the kind 
of relio:ion which we are considerino;. But we 
have further elicited, in connection with the con- 
ception of law and freedom, that a moral being, 
though a creature — that is, not the lord of the 
moral realm, but a subject within the same — is 
yet a moral being gifted with large powers of in- 
dependent action ; the law he obeys is made his 
oivn law, the fundamental principle of his being — 
self-responsible, that is, accountable to the tribunal 
of conscience wnthin. Such a being cannot morally 
be coerced by a law of necessity or compulsion. He 
is subject to the power of duty, it is true ; but this 
is not natural but moral compulsion; otherwise, 
what we call obligation. Hence w^hile there may 
be rewards and punishments in such a state, these 



THE KEY. W. XIC0LS0:N", M.A. 211 

rather confemplate the raising of the moral beings 
witliin themornl realm to the full realisation of their 
])osition than con.^titute legitimate motives. They 
are disciplinary and preparatory rather than ultimate 
and final. Thev aim at raising; ihe individual to his 
full dignity as a moi'al being, rather than as things 
to be sought or avoided in themselves. The only 
truly valid motive in a moral creature is conformity 
to the moral law as revealed in the conscience. 
Hence the relation of the Lord of the conscience, 
or the Supreme, in the realm of moral intelligents 
to the subjects of this realm is, and must remain, a 
moral relation ; not a relation of force, compulsion, 
or despotic rule. By their adoption of the moral 
law as the maxim of their actions, they enter into 
a pact, as it were, the pact which binds together 
the whole realm of moral intelligents, and thus they 
approach the moral Euler as a moral Being, though 
infinitely exalted above them, and He deals with 
them as beings who are, in some sense, kindred to 
Himself — constituted afier His imag:e. His whole 
relation to them is thus a moral relation. He 
deals with them as beino-s under moral law, in 
and for behoof of the full realisation of the aims 
of the moral law; and they reverence and 
worship Him under the same limitation, that 
the grand aim of a realm of moral intelligents 



212 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

may be fully realised — a kingdom of God esta- 
blished. 

V. But we must not forget a peculiarity of the 
moral plane or platform — that it is an earthly con- 
dition. It points to a state beyond, as necessnrily 
connected with the realisation of the moral law, 
but it does not follow that it can know much of 
that ultimate state ; nor is it necessary, as we saw 
in regard to rewards and punishments, that the 
nature of this ultimate state of being should be 
very fully revealed. Enough, that the moral law 
in its majesty is revealed as the supreme rule of 
life ; enough, that it is embodied in the Sovereign 
of moral intelligents ; enough, that we should be 
fully assured that the ultimate aim and end of the 
moral law will and must be attained. 

VI. Finally, we add a corollary which arises out 
of what has been said on the whole. We have not 
said that the moral plane is an inference or deduc- 
tion from the supposition of a Supreme Euler of 
the conscience, or of the moral realm, and the life 
and worship in relation to Him which necessarily 
follows. No ; on the contrary, the constitution of 
such a moral plane in which man is related to man 
as moral beings, may be said to be, as we have seen 
in the previous part of our discussion, a natural 
necessity ; the forces of man's life conspire to- 



THE REV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 213 

gether to its evolution or establishment ; when 
established, the constitution of a moral reb'gion 
with the characteristics we have been discussing, 
arises as a necessity of reason. 

VIT. We shall indeed see, as this earth can- 
not be our final home, that the moral implies a 
stage or plane beyond itself, in which its aims are 
fully attained, and in which the kingdom of God 
which morality can only proclaim as " at hand" is 
fuUv realised : '' where the tabernacle of God shall 
be with men, and He will dwell with them, and 
they shall be His people, and God HimSv^f shall 
be with them, and be their God '* (Revelation 
xxi. 3, 4). 



THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION (continued). 



XIII. 

By the Eev. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 

T^HE utterance of our Lord, '''H croorrjpia h rcov 
'lovSatcov ecTTLv'' (John iv. 22), spoken to the 
woman of Samaria, has a deep religious significance. 
It does not proclaim that religion is of the Jews, 
but that salvation (?/ a-oyrripta) is of the Jews. The 
nature-religions were not unknown to our Lord. 
In Galilee, where He spent His youth, there was 
much of the old Syrian nature-worship extant; 
w^hile the Greek and Roman cults had. found some 
acceptance, which they could not receive amongst 
the stricter and better-taught people of Judgea. 
There was thus, apart from that divine penetration 
which belonged to our Lord, the possibility of His 
having had some experience as to the relative posi- 
tion of tlje religion of Israel when compared with 
the heathen religions. The resuk of this was 
expressed in the sentence at the head of this 



THE KEV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 215 

chapter — '' Salvation, is of the Jews." Let us 
endeavour to consider what the meaning of this 
may be. 

(2.) The reference can be only to one thing, the 
salvation to accomplish which Jesus Christ had come 
iuto the world. He came ''to seek and to save the 
lost." That salvation which Jesus came to work 
out was life. " Slrait is the gate, and narrow is the 
way/' says our Lord elsewhere, '^ which leadeth 
unto life." The kingdom of God which He came 
to set up, which He already realised in His own 
consciousness, was therefore a kingdom of life. But 
was this life already revealed in the religion of 
Israel, so that when our Lord declared, that ^' sal- 
vation was of the Jews," it implied that they 
already possessed this life which was the substance 
of the salvation ? This last question we must 
answer in the negative, for the Master says else- 
where, " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life ;" 
but if the life were already revealed, how could 
Jesus reveal it ? yea, he it in His own person ? To 
answer adequately this question we must remember 
the character of the religion of Israel, as repeated 
in its whole history. It was a religion of promise, 
which grew clearer and brighter as the ages rolled 
onward. To Abraham it was a promise that in 
his seed all the nations of the earth were to ba 



216 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

blessed ; to David, that of his seed One would 
appear who should sit eternally on His throne. To 
prophet after prophet came the message of life 
or salvation through, a deliverer. In the sublime 
language of Isaiah : '' Incline your ear, and come 
unto Me : hear, and your soul shall live ; and I 
will make an everlasting covenant with you, even 
the sure mercies of David." The relio-ion of Israel 
was completely foreshadowed by the life of its first 
founder, the Father of the faithful and the friend 
of God. He came out of his own country, led by 
promise, the promise of the inheritance, which was, 
moreover, a promise not only for himself, but for his 
posterity. The patriarch entered into a covenant 
with God of future blessing to be realised by his 
descendants. And as age after age passed away, 
that history was but a history of decline from, and 
repeated renewal of this covenant of future blessing 
to be bestowed by God. 

(3.) Now this covenanted character of the reli- 
gion of Israel has very much to do with the spe- 
cially moral or ethical character which as a religion 
we have attributed to it. Kant, the philosopher, 
to whom on a variety of occasions we have referred, 
speaks somewhat contemptuously of the religion of 
Israel (see Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der 
hlossen Vernunft, III Stuck, Zweite Ahtheilung). 



THE EEV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 217 

But this only proves that the philosopher, like 
Homer, sometimes nodded ; and his English trans- 
lator, noticing his agreement with Bishop War- 
burton, remarks, in reference to the philosopher's 
observations as to the absence from the relicrion of 
Israel of the sanctions of a state of future retribu- 
tion, that here he not only contradicts AVarburton 
but himself. His latest German editor and com- 
mentator, Herr Kirchmann, calls this part of his 
work dilrftig, that is to say, j^oor^ and we fear that 
it fully deserves the designation. He has some 
remarks about the impotence of compulsory laws 
as influencing the conscience, v^^hich are true, but 
have been carefully ignored by the Government 
of his own country, who have all but extirpated^ 
the Christian religion, by putting it under the 
management and direction of the police. 

But it is surely curious, when we find the fol- 
lowing observations from the philosopher, '' Da nun 
ohne Glauben an ein ktinftiges Leben gar keine 
Eeligiou gedacht werden kann, so enthalt das Juden- 
thum, als ein solches in seiner Eeinigkeit genom- 
men, gar keinen Eeligionsglauben,'' — '' Since with- 

1 This language may be regarded as too strong by some of our 
readers ; but we submit, when the church attendance in a great 
capital falls to 1 per cent, and a fraction, as admitted in a paper 
recently read before the Evangelical Alliance, the Christian religion 
is certainly in a fair way tow ards extirpation. 

15 



218 THE ONE PURELY MOEAL RELIGION. 

out faith in a future life no religion can be thouirlit 
to exist, and since Judaism as a religion strictly 
considered does not contain such, it cannot be con- 
sidered as a religious faith." We know of another 
religion, viz., the religion witliin the bounds of 
reason, excogitated by a certain philosopher, to 
which the same objection applie??. But he adds 
further : ^' It is scarcely to be doubted that the 
Jews, like others, even the rudest of peoples, must 
have had not only faith in a future life, but also, 
of course, as a heaven and a hell ; for this faith, 
in virtue of the universal moral constitution oj 
human nature, comes to every one as a necessary 
thing.'' Most true, Mr. Philosopher, but there are 
reasons for everything ; and just as there are reasons 
for the very feeble mention of a future life in your 
religion within the bounds of bare reason, so there 
are better reasons still for its seeming omission in 
the religion of Israel. But before coming to this 
point, it is desirable to notice more fully how im- 
portant the covenanted character of the religion 
of Israel is, as bearing upon what we have said 
respecting it, as the only religion on the moral 
plane, or on the ground of the moral, which has ever 
existed. We have already noticed, as brought up 
by the German philosopher, the danger of making 
religion a thing of the police. 



THE REV. W. ^ICOLSOiSr, M.A. 219 

But the philosopher has failed to notice, that 
^vhile in some sense the religion of Israel was, as 
an external polity, and bound up with national law, 
necessarily a compulsory religion, there was an- 
other sense, and a higher one, in which it was not 
compulsory at all. This was in its relation to God. 
The heathen relio-ions set forth gods, whose hateful 
tja-anny was in violent contradiction to the highest 
parts of our common nature. It is in relation to 
this that De Quincey has said, that the Roman 
must have had, on occasions, a strong desire to kick 
Jupiter, his supreme god. We know, moreover, 
that savage peoples are addicted to chastising their 
gods. But this was just because their gods were 
no gods in accordance with the moral sense of 
humanity, but deifications, in virtue of the instinct 
of worship, of the arbitrary forces of nature. But 
morally, as we have seen, the case must stand 
otherwise. We have remarked (p. 208), " He — 
i.e., the worshipper on the basis of morality — 
is not independent of the '^ Lord of the conscience," 
of the Being or Power who has constituted him 
what he is ; but in connection with the principle 
of freedom, he has been constituted a responsible 
creature, and within the latitude of that respon- 
sibility he is a morally independent being. He 
recognises the moral law as the root principle of his 



220 THE ONE PUEELY MORAL RELIGION. 

own nature, adopts it as the maxim of his life, and 
postulates conformity to it as both possible and 
practicable/' We saw, further, how undiT moral 
law, and on the moral plane, the Lord of the con- 
science, whom we are compelled to regard as the 
God who '' made the heavens and the earth," and 
sustains them, places man in regard to Himself on 
purely moral rJations. Now this is entirely the 
case with the religion of Israel. Jehovah, the cove- 
nant God, places Abraham and his descendants on 
purely moral grounds and relations in regard to 
Himself. He binds Himself by the same law under 
which He places them ; He is bound entirely by 
the terms of the covenant as much as they are, 
yea, in a far higher and deeper sense, for as a per- 
fectly holy Being He cannot deny Himself, but is 
bound by His own covenant, whether the other 
2>arty to it adheres to its terms or not. Do the 
severe judgments of Jc'hovah in dealing with His 
people in regard to their lapses from the covenant 
in any way invalidate this? No doubt, as we have 
seen, the grand legitimate motive on the moral 
plane, is reverence of and obedience to the moral 
law, as commanding unconditionally. But still a 
state of preparation, as in the family, and discipline 
so as to raise those under the law to the full under- 
standing of it and its requirements, may be recog- 



THE REV. W. KICOLSON, M.A. 221 

nised. The religion of Israel was full of injunctions 
as to this instructory process iu regard to the 
families of Israel; and the rewards and judgments 
which were offered to Israel, whom Jehovah names 
His son, may be regarded, and are commonly 
regarded, as a disciplinary process to raise liim fully 
up to the requirements of the moral law. The 
rewards are subsidiary motives, appealing to man s 
desire for happiness, as are also the punishments 
inflicted for violation of the law. These rewards 
and punishments do not destroy Israel's freedom, 
do not violate iu any way his position as morally 
related to Jehovah, nor does Jehovah step out of 
the moral character wdiich belongs to Him in inflict- 
ing them. 

(4.) The ceremonial law is to be regarded in 
like manner as a disciplinary process, having the 
same end in view as the rewards and punishments 
of which we have just spoken. Israel was to be 
like his God — ''' Be ye holy, for I am holy ; " and 
the ceremonial law w^as an elaborate teaching by 
facts and symbols of the necessity of holiness. 
Even the cleanliness and purity which were en- 
joined, were calculated to impress upon Israel the 
supreme importance of purity of life and heart. 
The religion of Israel has been accused of exter- 
nalism, and no doubt it is in some degree open to 



222 THE OKE PURELY MOKAL RELIGION. 

the reproach ; but we see how, in the last of the 
TEN WORDS or commands, the law points to the 
lust conceived within as the source of the outward 
trnijsgn^ssion, and seeks to confront and che(*k evil 
in its first inception in the heart. But this was 
more fully provided for, in the [)ersonal relation of 
the individual Israelite to his God. He was more 
than the gods of the heathen, which stood in a 
general or collective relation only to the whole 
jjeople, but had less to do with the individual. 
It was not so with the God of Israel. As " search- 
ing the heart and trying the reins of the children 
of men'' (Jer. xvii. lo), He stood in closest jyer- 
soiled relation to the individual Israelite, and He 
invited not only the fear, but the love of His 
people, though as founded upon law, as pre- 
eminently a moral system, fear seems to prepon- 
derate over love. ^^ The fear of the Lord is the 
beginning of wisdom." If the Israelite turned to 
the earliest records of his people, he could read the 
famih'ar and even tender relations in which the 
first founder of his people stood to Jehovali. 
Abraham was the friend of God, admitted to a 
tender and gracious intimacy ; and the same was 
true of Isaac and Jacob, of Moses, and others of 
the patriarchs. This warm and close relation of 
affection and reverence, in w^hich the Israelite was 



THE EEV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 223 

invited to come in regard to Jehovah, must bring 
out streams of spiritual life, and we have only to 
tarn to the Psalms and Prophets to see how fully 
and splendidly this was verified. What deep 
breathings of upward aspiration ! ^^ As the hart 
panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul 
after Thee, God. My soul thirsteth for God, for 
the living God : when shall I come an<l appear 
before God ? '' (Psalm xlii.) And what religion, 
save the unique spiritual religion of the world — 
Christianity — can parallel the tender joy and con- 
fidence of the twenty-third Psalm — '' The Lord is 
my Shepherd ; I shall not want. He maketh me 
to lie down in green pastures : He leadeth me 
beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul : He 
leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His 
name's sake. Yea, thoug-h I walk through the 
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : 
for Thou art with me ; Thy rod and Thy staff" they 
comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me 
in the presence of mine enemies : Thou anointest 
my head with oil ; my cup runneth over. Surely 
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the daj^s 
of my life : and I will dwell in the house of the 
Lord for ever.'' There was thus abundant prepa- 
ration and means for the cultivation of personal 
religion in the religion of Israel ; and personal 



224 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

religion must be ever a thing of the heart and 
life. It was indeed here that the religion of Israel 
rose above its natural level and anticipated Ciiris- 
tianity. Here the Israelitish religion was not only 
a moral, but became by anticipation a spiritual 
religion, just as the child is the father of the man ; 
and we may perceive the lower level of develop- 
ment foreshadowing the bigLer. 

(5.) For while there was in Israel those streams 
of spiritual life still preserved to us in the Prophets 
and Psalms, yet Israel, nevertheless, as a people, 
remained essentially on the moral basis. The law 
was its watchword, and even their piety and re- 
ligious life were restricted and confined by the law. 
And this not merely the law as an external, objec- 
tive thing, but mainly by the law given within, 
the law of the mind warring against the appetites 
and passions, — the law of sin in the members, yet 
often succumbing to them, and having abundant 
reason to cry out, as the apostle does — '' Oh, 
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death ? '' The basis of the 
moral plane is the sense of obligation, the moral 
law given as a datum of the consciousness. The 
law of conscience is the centre of man's moral 
being, but still it is a law, an abstraction, which 
presses on the man with unyielding power, and 



THE REV. W. NICOLSOX, M.A. 225 

commands unconditionally, no doubt, but has in 
the reverence which it awakens in the heart only 
an imperfect spring of obedience. The conflict 
arises within the personality which the apostle 
has so graphically described in the seventh of 
Eomans, with the ?ad result, that the ^' law which 
was ordained to life, is found to be unto death" 
(Eom. vii. 10). 

The externally given law, written not on the 
fleshy tables of the heart, but on tables of stone, 
only intensified the struggle. It was the reflex of 
the law written on the heart, graven, as it were, on 
the rock, and holding up objectively the law of 
conscience in defiance of all attempts to tamper 
with, or waip, or silence the inward voice within 
And the result both as described by the npostle in 
the chapter just referred to, as obtaining in the 
heart of the individual, and as exemplified in a 
larger scale in the history of the Israeliti^h people, 
was to show^ how imperfect and insufficient the 
purely moral basis is in itself. In regard to Chris- 
tianity — the temptation under which is to fall back 
on the moral basis, as the temptation of Israel w^as 
to fall back on the natural basis and the nature- 
religions — there is good reason for the prejudice of 
the pious mind against what it describes as mere 
^'"cold" morality. No doubt there may be perver- 



226 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

sions of spirituality, as there are perversions of 
morality. But the prejudice referred to is well 
founded, because it recognises the essentially 
earthly and insufficing character of the purely 
moral stnge. We have already pointed to these 
in dealing with the view which regards morality 
as a humanistic and sclf-sufficins: thino\ We saw 
how this view was especially represented in the 
ethical doctrines of Kant, and how the tendency was 
to evaporate what seemed the sound and stable 
foundations of the edifice into mere abstract notions 
or ideas. The lord of the conscience need only be 
an idea. As a critic justly remarks of the rela- 
tions of religion to this view of morality, that she, 
i.e., Eeligion, " was merely called in to be a sort of 
dry-nurse to morality, for she must do duty gene- 
rally for this when in a weakly condition ; but so 
soon as morality gets a little stronger upon her legs, 
she shows religion to the door ! " ^ But while the 
recognition of morality as all-sufficient leads to this, 
we see it also exemplified in the history of Israel, 
whose religion, ultimately at least, occupied a purely 
moral basis. The law was its watchword, and the 
result was, as we have seen, alike unsatisfactory in 
the individual and in the nation. The final result 

1 0. Pfleiderer's Die Religion^ ihr Wesen und Hire Geschichte^ vol. i ' 
p. 16. 



THE REV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 227 

in the history of Israel was the creation of the 
Pharisee. Now what is the Pharisee ? Not merely 
the name applied to a canting, hypocritical reli- 
gionist, for it would be calumny to say that the 
Pharisees were all such ; the Pharisee is one who 
consciously and with full purpose sets about mak- 
ing hims "If better, and who, while ignorant of the 
deepest evils of his own heart, is consciously grow- 
ing in self-esteem and self-satisfaction through his 
supposed victorious advance in truth and righteous- 
ness. Says Bunyan, as he passed through this 
stage : '' And for a whole year I thought I pleased 
God as well as any man in England/' Israel occu- 
pied essentially the moral stage ; the law of God to 
be wrought out and exemplified in its minutest 
details, its '^mint and its cumin,'' was her boast 
and her constant aim ; while in victorious advance- 
ment in self-conscious external, and especially cere- 
menial morality, and holding the law as a national 
badge, she at the same time forgot the inward 
principles of truth and righteousness. 

(6.) We shall see that the supposed hiatus in the 
religion of Israel, as to the doctrine of the future 
life, arose from the very circumstances on which we 
have been treating, viz., that Israers religion, as a 
people, was on the purely moral basis. Systems of 
ethics have, as a rule, little to say about a future 



228 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

life ; they occupy themselves in developing the 
moral reflations between man and man as denizens 
of earth, and although tliey may rise to the recog- 
nition of a Supreme Being, they can only speak of 
man's relations to Him as a creature^, and under 
moral government here on earth. Such was also 
the case with Israel. Recomisino; Jehovah as the 
national God, the Ruler of Israel, in covenanted 
relations with whom as a peo[)le they ^' lived, moved, 
and had their being,'' from whom they had received 
the promise of ^^ life, breath, and all things/' it was 
not surprising that they found this to be final and 
sufficing. The ancients were as yet destitute of 
that conception with which we are so familiar — the 
conception of eternity, duration unregulated by that 
conception of time which, together with space, is 
said necessarily to form part of the furniture of our 
perceiving faculty. In the Psalms the devout 
Israelite felt himself in the hand of that God who 
was so near to him, who ''had been the dwelling- 
place of his fathers in all generations," and he was 
content to loave himself in His hands without 
straiuing his eyes to catch some glimpses of the 
world beyond the grave. In the twenty-third 
Psalm, while he rejoices in the sense of Jehovah's 
nearness, goodness, and mercy, he says — ''Good- 
ness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my 



THE EEV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 229 

life ; and T will dwell in the house of the Lord for 
length of days/' as the concluding words of the 
psalm are translated in the mai-gin of our Eng- 
lish Bible. The pious Israelite felt so joyful and 
blessed and safe in the hand of Jehovah, that 
he was content not to be too curious about the 
future. The mystery of life and death presses most 
heo.vily upon the speculative, the sceptical, and the 
unhappy. The soul who can trust God with its 
future is less anxious about it. 

(7.) But finally, a comparative inquiry as to the 
position of the religion of Israel in this respect, as 
compared with the highest of the nature-religioiis, 
or even with Islam, which has been classed wdth 
the religion of Israel, as occupying with it tlie same 
moral platform. We have ventured to say that the 
religion of Israel is the only purely moral religion 
extant, as Christianity is the only spiritual : let us 
now" endeavour to make good this position as re- 
rards the first of these. Our would-be advanced 
thinkers look down from their lofty critical stand- 
point and speak of '^ the religions," as they pass 
them in review, as if they all occupied the same 
place and had the same relaticms to the human con- 
sciousness. We aflfirm, on the contrary, that there 
is in reality no comparison, for in the whole course 
of the world's history only one purely moral religion 



230 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

lins appeared — tlie religion of Israel ; and at the 
fulness of the time only one spiritual religion — 
the religion of Jesus Christ. 

(8.) We have seen what the characteristics of a 
moral reliiiion must be. Thev are, that God is the 
Lord of the conscience, that He is necessarily one, 
and that His worship and service must he, in har- 
mony with His position as the Lord of the con- 
science, entirely moral in their character. But 
furthermore, morality implies freedom ; that man's 
obedience to the law should be a free and not a 
compulsory, slavish obedience. As an external 
national polity, there w^ere some aspects of the 
religion of Israel in \Ahich it was necessarily com- 
pulsory, but in the highest of all aspects it was 
free. Jehovah had entered into covenant relations 
with His people, and was as much, nay, truly more 
fully bound by the terras of the covenant than 
Israel itself. AYe saw, further, how the externalism 
of the Israelii ish relighm w^as corrected by the 
tender and intimate relations to God into which 
the devout Israelite might enter, the result of 
which is the living fountains of spiritual life which 
we find in the Prophets and Psalms. 

Finally, in the fact that Israel was, at least in the 
first ages of his national existence, so satisfied with 
his trust and confidence in Jihovah as the national 



THE EEV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 231 

God, whicli it was bis privilege to exeicise, tliat 
there was seemingly litlle or no inquiry about the 
future life, which Kant takes to be a neces-ary 
article in any true and genuine religion. In the 
first place, time, future time, was only thought of 
indefinitely as secida seculorum, to use the Eoman 
expression; and secondly, as we have seen, the 
pious Israelite was brought so near to his Goil, was 
able so to confide all into His hands, that in the 
sense of the presence of Jehovah, and in the enjoy- 
ment of the blessings granted to him, he was con- 
tented to trust Him as to his future. No doubt, 
in the great calamities which clouded the fall of 
Israel, the future life and the doctrine of the resur- 
rection began to occupy a more prominent place, 
but not till then. Here, then, we have all the marks 
of a genuine snored religion — in its necessarily 
strict monotheism, and in the moral character of 
its worship, which the recognised system of rewards 
and punishments, and the observation of the cere- 
monial law shows to be imperfect, indeed, but not 
self-contradictory. How, for example, does the 
Iranian or Persian religion, which otherwise bears 
so noble a character, stand in comparison with the 
Israelitish ? How does the religion of Buddha or 
Sakya Muni ? These religions are below the moral 
}evel — the religion of Zarathrustra^ because, not to 



232 THE ONE PURELY MOKAL RELIGION. 

speak of its dualism, and the high place given to 
Alirimaii, it recognises other gods besides Ahura- 
mazda. He as supreme god recognises Mithra as 
so high, that it was said he himself brought sacri- 
fices to him. Besides Mithra, whose mysteries came 
into vogue in the later days of Eome, we read of 
the god Craosha, the companion of Mithra, and 
indeed tlie whole of the circle of the ancient Per- 
sian gods was strangely taken up and accommo- 
dated to his system by Zarathrustra — a strange 
contrast to the inward worship and the means of 
attaining to virtue, of ^^ the pure sentiment, the 
true word, and tlie good act." 

Buddhism, with much to recommend it to the 
acceptance of men, especially in that Indian world 
where it found its home, occupies morally even a 
le.^s honourable position than the religion of Zara- 
thrustra. It is defiled by taking up the whole 
Indian Pantheon into its heaven, though it subjects 
them to Buddha, or the wise man. This, however, 
as has been shown, is not absolutely new ; for in 
Brahmanism the wise man, in virtue of his prayers, 
may become the master of the gods, and use 
them as the puppets of his pleasure. Again, the 
essence of evil in Buddhism is nothing else than 
existence itself, the destruction of which under the 
toriuents of the eiidless trajisformations of tbe 



THE REV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 233 

metempsycliosis is the very corner-stone of the 
system. Some have admired the moral precepts 
which are to be found in Buddhism ; but more or 
less of morality is associated with all forms of reli- 
gion. The truth is, God has written the moral law 
so deeply on the heart of man, that even when called 
in question by the pantheist, or denied by the 
atheist, it still vindicates its authority and power. 
It was thus, as the Apostle Paul tells us, that the 
Gentiles *^ did by nature the things contained in 
the law ; '' thus showing the '* work of the law to be 
written on their hearts." And hence, the presence 
of morality under the sway of a certain religion is 
no indication of the moral tendency of the religion 
itself. There is morality in all religions. As we 
have already seen, nature, if we may so speak, con- 
spires to moralise mankind, and to render complete 
and stable that moral plane or platform to whose 
existence we have drawn attention. We have but to 
remember how, under the Greek and Eoman mytho- 
logies, with their fairy-like Olympus, through the 
corrective influence of a settled order and civilisa- 
tion, such a high moral condition was reached, that 
the Greek and Eoman philosophers could discuss 
most of those questions and moral problems which 
we sum together under the name of ethics ; and in 
considering this state of things, we perceive that 

16 



234 THE OKE PUEELY MORAL RELIGION. 

men may advance in the practice and theory of 
virtue, not because of, but in spite of their religion. 
Still there can be no doubt that a religion in the 
course of centuries greatly modifies and raises or 
degrades the character, morally, of the people who 
profess it. Now, if we apply this to the religions 
under discussion, we shall sec how they operate in 
their influence upon the character of the people who 
professed them. We have already dwelt upon some 
of the defects of the reliHon of Israel, defects aris- 
ing from its being a preparatory rather than a final 
religion, and arising also from the fact that it rose 
but little above the moral plane, and partook con- 
sequently of the defects of morality, as a merely 
earthly, inchoative, and imperfect system. The 
defects culminated in its latter days in Pharisaism, 
or an intensely self-conscious, self-exalting, and at 
the same time barren legalism ; into Saduceeism, 
or the scepticism and infidelity of the privileged 
classes, whose business it was, as classes, to admi- 
nister the religion ; and finally into monasticism in 
the religion of the Essenes, who, as in the case of 
all monastics, give up the struggle with the world 
for the establishment of the kingdom of God, and 
fleeing to the desert or the monastery, seek to save 
themselves from the common destruction! These 
evils arose^ however, in the last days of the religion 



THE REV. W. KICOLSON, M.A. 235 

of Israel, not because there was any contradiction 
or inconsistency in tlie religion of Israel as regards 
the principles of morality ; but because the Jewish 
people, instead of cultivating the spiritual element 
which was inherent in their religion, and which was 
developed to great fulness in the spiritual life of the 
devouter part of the nation, the expression of which 
we have preserved in the prophetic and poetic books 
of the Old Testament scriptures, adhered but too 
rigidly to the purely moral basis, and thus sank into 
a barren lei>:alism and formalism, in which the Jew 
rests to the present day. 

(9.) When, however, we turn to Buddhism, the 
case is different. There are grave inconsistencies 
and contradictions in the svstem in relation to the 
moral plane of the life of humanity. First of all, 
a truly moral religion can only recognise one God. 
Buddhism took up the whole Hindoo pantheon, 
though it placed its gods in a powerless condition in 
relation to Buddha. ^' My power is great," Bialima, 
the supreme Indian god, is made to say in a Bud- 
dhistic legend ; ^' but what can I do against a priest 
of Buddha ? '' Again, morality is human ; it seeks 
to perfect human life, not to destroy it. But the 
Buddhistic morality, with all the commendable 
things in it, has this defect, that it seeks not to 
develop and perfect, but to destroy. This is seen 



236 THE ONE PUEELY MORAL RELIGION. 

in its monasticism, with its nihilistic and pessi- 
mistic character, its endeavours to destro}^ and not 
to perfect humanity. No doubt the Buddhistic 
system has eflfectually tamed the lude Mongols, but 
its results are everywhere negative rather than 
positive. It seeks to tame, to emptyj yea, in truth 
to annihilate humanity. And these passive, self- 
emptying virtues are only practised on the lower 
levels of the system ; when we come to the higher, 
then its negative and nihilistic phases become all 
too apparent. They aim them not only at taming 
the passions and subduing the lusts, but at the 
destruction of self-conscious existence, the quench- 
ing and extinction of the human spirit. It speaks 
of love of being, and establishes hospitals for vermin ; 
it esteems life so sacred that it will not kill the 
vermin on its own body ; but, as Max Duncker, the 
historian of antiquity, remarks — **Love in the 
system of Buddha is not as in Christianity, the 
highest commandment for its own sake, not, as 
in this, a liberating, active, and creative ethical 
power, which not only negatively seeks to uproot 
selfishness, but strives also to cause the natural 
man to be born again into the moral ^ condition ; 
the love of Buddhism, on the contrary, lamenting 
the universal lot of conscious being, seeks to render 

^ More properly the spiritual. 



THE REV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 237 

the community of life a little more endurable. 
Love is thus to the Buddhist essentially only a 
means to soften and diminish the universal suffer- 
ing of living beings." And, as we have seen, this 
ceases in the higher stages of the system ; the self- 
regarding quietism which then sets in, regards only 
self, sinks into self-contemplation, or more properly, 
endeavour after self-annihilation. True morality 
has ever an ideal, both ethical and practical, in the 
lord of the conscience and the kingdom of God ; 
Buddhism knows neither of the two — its ideals are 
only earthly Buddhas, its practical aim self- extinc- 
tion. One who has lately written on the state of 
the Mongols, amongst whom this religion is all-pre- 
valent, remarks on the helpless, hopeless condition 
to which their religion has reduced them — their 
willing submission to the most grinding despotism, 
their apathy in the path of improvement, and their 
dependence for the arts of life on their Chinese 
master.^ 

(10.) But finally, we have the Buddhistic para- 
dise, the state called Nirvana. This has awakened 
much controversy, and has been variously considered 
in Europe of late, and, indeed, in the systems of 
Schopenhauer and Hartmann we have a kind of 
intellectual Buddhism, arisiiio; and becomino' the 

^ See Gilmour's "Among the Mongols," chap, xviii. pp. 210-243 



238 THE ONE PURELY MORAL RELIGION. 

most popular philosophy of the time, in the midst 
of the culture and enlightenment of the Fatherland. 
In our own country, the charms and glories of 
Buddhism has kindled the muse of Mr. Edwin Arnold 
in his '' Light of Asia." But what is Nirvana ? The 
blackness of annihilation has been cctvered with 
poetical images, as flowers and wreaths are cast on 
the tomb, and men are made to believe that — 

" Only when all the dross of sin is quit, 
Only when life dies like a white flame spent, 
Death dies along with it," 

as if there were in some sort a life in death in the 
midst of the blank darkness of the Buddhist Nir- 
vana. It is doubtless true, and for good reason, 
that Sakya Muni refused to pronounce that Nirvana 
was extinction, as he also refused to aflirm that it 
was life. This was probably a prudent reserve. 
Even the votary who would flee the endless wan- 
derings of the metempsychosis might still shudder 
at the blankness of annihilation ! 

" Sad care ! for who would lose, 
Though full of pain, this intellectual being I 
These thoughts that wander through eternity." ^ 

But that Nirvana is annihilation, blank extinction, 
no one can doubt w^ho studies the whole tendency 
of the system ? Existence itself is evil, and this, 

1 See Milton's "Paradise Lost,'' Book IL 



THE REV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 239 

according to Sakya Miiiii, must be destroyed. 
Passion, feeling, desire, every movement of the 
spirit must cease, and absolute rest from the evils 
of existence must be obtained. But is the lono^ino; 
after immortality still to remain ? There is to be 
absolute cessation from all aspiration, yearning, 
longing of every kind, and yet the longing after 
immortality in the blank darkness of Nirvana is 
still to remain? This is Hat contradiction, and 
therefore we hold that Herr Oldenberg, in his lately 
published able work on Buddhism, has shown the 
fallacy of Professor Max Muller's reasoning when 
he would, mainly on abstract grounds, convert the 
nothingness of Buddhism into a positive state of 
eternal felicity ! '' If we follow,'' says Herr Olden- 
berg, '' the dialectical consequence, there can no- 
thing be looked for than a blank vacuum/' And 
identifying, further, ^^Ego," ^^ Sulf,'' and ^^ Person" 
the Buddhistic texts, he remarks : '' It seems clear in 
enough that both words are different names for the 
same concept, and that he who denies the existence 
of ^Person' cannot maintain the existence of the 
' Ego ' as more than a mere possibility."-^ 

Such is Buddhism, with its existence — a hell to 
be cooled in some measure by the mutual aid of the 
unhappy victims ; its highest life, the extinction of 

1 See Oldeiiberg's "Buddha," ss. 273 ff. 



240 THE ONE PUKELY MOKAL RELIGION. 

all feeling and thought; its paradise, annihilation; 
its final result, a blank atheism. 

(11.) There remains yet that we should look 
briefly at the pretensions of Islam as a moral reli- 
gion. Much of it, no doubt, is a syncretism drawn 
from Christian and Jewish sources. The most 
emphatic doctrine of Islam is the afiirmation of the 
unity of God, and here its superiority over the cor- 
rupt forces of Christianity and the heathen Arab 
superstitions it supplanted cannot be doubted. In 
this respect it rises superior to the popular forms 
of Eastern Christianity to the present day, whose 
image and picture worship amount, in the case of 
the common people, to actual idolatry, the images 
being named gods. In this respect the appearance 
of Islam has been a powerful protest for the unity 
of the Godhead. But side by side with this we 
have the doctrine of hismety or fate, which has 
exercised, and continues to exercise, such an evil 
effect upon the Mohammedan nations to the pre- 
sent day. This is not the doctrine of predestina- 
tion, such as is to be found amongst Christians, but 
the ancient doctrine of an irresponsible fate made 
a part of the Mohammedan religion. The sensu- 
ality and fleshly lust which Islam allows, nay, takes 
up into its paradise, are in conflict with the laws 
of morality ; so much so, that the Mohammedan 



THE REV. W. NICOLSOK, M.A. 241 

mystics are themselves ashamed of them, and endea- 
vour to explain them away. The Mohammedan 
paradise with its houris ; its polygamy ; its rooted 
sanction of slavery ; its approval of war even for 
missionary purposes, are all in couflict with an 
eulightened morality, and amount in many cases 
to a degradation of humanity. Especially is this 
marked in the universal deg;radation of the female 
part of humanity, and the consequent corruption of 
the family, and the evil results to education and 
the advancement of the race. 

Amongst Christian nations war is waged in de- 
spite of Christianity, — it is taken up and adopted 
as part and parcel of Islam. Finally, the institution 
of slavery as sanctioned by Mohammedanism is a 
degradation of humanity. No doubt polygamy and 
slavery were permitted also in Israel, but they were 
limited by such restraints, that they were almost 
extruded from the national life, and certainly never 
had those evil influences they have had upon the 
Mohammedan nations. 

(12.) The final conclusion to which we come is, 
then, that although the religion of Israel was pro- 
visional, and, moreover, the religion of a people in 
a rude state of society, and exposed to the constant 
inroads of foreign foes, yet it is by far the highest 
of aU the religions of the ancient or modern worlds, 



242 THE ONE PUHELY MORAL RELIGION. 

always excepting Christianity, of which it may be 
regarded as the precursor. We have insisted upon 
its coincidence with the moral level of humanity, 
its full acceptance and development of moral free- 
dom, its strict monotlieism, and the principle of 
life and growth in it arising from its close and gra- 
cious relation to Jehovah, out of which grew and 
were nourished the noblest men and women of the 
nation. 

In rehition to Jehovah, women were placed upon 
an equality with the rougher sex, and were often 
the vehicles of the revelations of the Divine will, 
as we see in the case of Deborah the prophetess 
and others. That in some points Israel fell below 
the moral level, with which it was generally coin- 
cident, is explained by our Lord as arising from 
the imperfect and rude state of the Israelites, as in 
a state of religious growth and progressive advance- 
ment. But the moral stage, as we have seen, is 
only itself an imperfect state. The Eeligion of Israel 
was not and could not be final, for the kingdom 
of God, which it presupposed, and which formed 
its ultimate aim, with its higher level of spirituality, 
was destined to supersede it. Our final conclusion 
is, that this religion was the only one that has closely 
approximated to the moral plane of humanity. 

A word in conclusion as to the higher level taken 



THE KEV. W. NICOLSON, M.A. 243 

by Christianity — as the unique spiritual religion. 
This lay in the actual coming of the kingdom of 
God. That kingdom was first embodied in Jesus 
Christ, as the second Adam ; whose pure conscious- 
ness reflected back and was in entire baimony 
with the divine life of the Father ; and His life was 
to illuminate '^ every man coming into the world/' 
The organ on of this higher plane is not the sense 
of moral obligation as on the lower planes, but 
faith, as the vision of ^' things not seen" and '' the 
foundation of things hoped for." The subjects 
of this kingdom are no longer servants, as under 
the ancient covenant, but children, " heirs of God 
and joint heirs wath Christ." In them, Humanity, 
newly created and joined to its Head, is to partake 
of, and to be raised, in ever approximating union, 
to the Divine Nature, to the throne of God.^ 

1 2 Peter i 4 ; 1 John iii. 2 ; Eev. iii. 21. 



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CINCINNATI, CHICACO. ST. LOUIS, 



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Two Valilable Bool(S fron) the 6efn)ar). 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. A Popular Treatise on Christian 
Ethics. 

BY C. F. PAULUS, D. D., 

Professor of Systematic Theology at German Wallace College. 

Translated by F. W. SCHNEIDER, A. M., 

Professor of Mathematics and English at German Wallace College. 

Large izrno. Cloth. 41^ pages, $^.50. 

PReSS NOTICES. 
From the JBnlthnore Methodist, 

It exhibits the keenness of penetration and exhaustiveness of research 
which characterize the German brain, and leaves nothing more to be said 
on the subjects which it consecutively treats. 

From Fnbiic Opinion, 

It is a very careful and candid treatment of the subject from the 
Christian stand-point, and is free from much of the technical language 
and involved expressions common to such treatises. 

From the Preachers* 3Iitgazuie» 

Its views are rational and in harmony with evangelical teachings. 
Much that is new, and stated with exceeding clearness, makes it a niucli- 
to-be-desired work for every Christian's library. 

A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. From the German of 
Professor Rudolph Sohm. (Leipzig.) 

BY CHARLES W. RISHEIvL, M. A., 
With Revisions, JNotes, and Additions. 

i2ino. Cloth, jyo pages. $1.00. 
The little book herewith given to the public is based upon 
the " Kirchengeschichte im Grundriss," by Professor Rudolph 
Sohm, Professor of Jurisprudence in the University of Leipzig, 
the many excellencies of which are enhanced by the fact that 
here Church history is written from the stand-point of a 
lawyer. — Author's Preface. 

PRESS NOTICES. 
From the 3Iethodist, FhlJadelphia, 

Too much can not be said in favor of this small volume of history. 
It should be in every Church and Sunday-school library. The very thing 
for young people. 

Front Piihlic Opinion, 

Professor Rudolph Sohm's "History of Christianity," a work well 
known to the specialist in Church history, has been translated and 
recast by Charles W. Rishell, A. M., and is now accessible to American 
readers. . . . The changes have been for the better. In its present 
iorm the book will be a boon to a large class of readers in our country. 



CRANSTON Sz CURTS, Pubi^ishkr®. 
CINCINNATI, CHICAGO. ST. LOUIS. 



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APOSTOLIC ORGANISM. 

BY J. C. MAGEE, D. D. 
Introduction by J. C. W. COXE, PH. D., D. D. 

121110. Cloth, 26j pages, go cents. 

The author has written from the stand-point of a pastor, with 
a distinct perception of the needs of his people. I am con- 
fident that his work will prove a boon to the younger members 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, while it will be read with 
pleasure and profit by mature minds both in the ministry and 
laity. — Dr. Coxe, in Introduction, 

PRESS NOTICES. 

From the 3I<'thodist Review, 

Having carefully examined a manuscript entitled "Apostolic Organ- 
ism," I take pleasure in testif3'ing to its value, both as a historical docu- 
ment and as a discussion of a disputed ecclesiastical problem. The 
author has thoroughly informed himself on the subject, and as he writes 
in a stj-le both transparent and euphonious, the paper, if published, will 
be enjoj-able as well as profitable to all who read it.— y. W. Mendenhall. 

From the JMethodlst Herald, 

The book endeavors to show in what the true visible Churchhood 
consists. The doctrine of successionism is thoroughly examined, and 
its fallacies and absurdities clearly exposed. Part II shows the harmony 
of the Methodist Episcopal genesis and order with the precedents and 
principles of the New Testament. The argument is clear and forcible 
throughout, and is conducted in a spirit of candor. 

From the Feninsular 3IetJiodist, 

Dr. Magee has given us a lucid exposition of what true Churchhood 
consists in, and of what the apostolic pattern is, as learned from the 
New Testament and from the facts of history. , . . Every member of 
our Church ought to be in possession of this little volume, and give it a 
careful reading. 

THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

BY T. R. BIRKS, M. A. 

121110. Cloth. 4j6 pages, go cents. 

He sees clearly, understands his work well, aiid writes 
fiDrcibly. He does not evade the real points at issue, but 
enters fully and fairly into the subtle and delicate questions 
which lie back of all questions of mere historical credibility, 
and, conceding to a considerable extent the honesty of modern 
inquiry, he candidly meets and discusses the real difB.culties 
w^hich the skeptic presents. We bespeak for this work a 
cordial reception in this country. — Bishop I. W. WiIvKY, D. D, 



CRANSTON & CXJRTS, F^ublismkrs, 
CINCINNATI, CHICAGO, ST. LOUIS. 



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THE COLORED MAN IN THE METHODIST EPIS- 
COPAL CHURCH. 

BY REV. L. M. HAGOOD, M. D. 
Introduction by RKV. JOHN BRADEN, D. D. 

i2ino. Cloth. ^2'/ pages, go cents. 

This book will wake up thought on a subject on which the 
membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church need to think 
and act. . . . The book well merits a careful reading, as 
the author speaks from a stand-point of an intelligent appre- 
ciation of the treatment of the Negro, and as he has had some 
experiences which entitle him to be heard. — Dr. Braden, hi 
Introductiofi. 

PRESS NOTICES. 
From the Chriatinn Advocate, New York. 

In a clear, and we believe generally logical and fair-minded way, the 
author gives a history of the manj^ relations between our own Church 
and the colored people, and he certainly has reason for thinking that to 
the future historian, as well as the present, the facts which he has 
collected will be of interest. Many illustrations adorn a well-printed 
page, and the educational facts are of great importance. 

From the Fittshurg Christian Advocate, 

Dr. Hagood, an able and honored colored minister, shows by the 
history of the Church how fairly and honorably she has dealt with her 
colored people, and therefore lets them see what hope they have for the 
future. It is a carefully prepared and able book, reflecting credit on the 
author and the Church. 

CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS FORCES. 

BY WILLIAM RILKY HALSTKAD. 

j2mo. Cloth. igS pages, 60 cents. 

This book, at bottom, is a discussion of the preserv^ative 
forces underlying civil society in the United States. — From 
Author's Preface, 

PRESS NOTICES. 
From the Christian Merald, 

The book is a scholarly one, and is a successful excursion into a 
realm of inquiry which has not been thoroughly explored. It furnishes 
a wholesome correction of some superficial thinking. 

From the Church Advocate, 

It deals intelligently with the questions of religious organization 
and the spirit of American law, with political parties and politicians, the 
Church and the preacher. The two chapters on "What Religion does 
for the Social Order," and "Mistaken and Hasty Methods for the Over- 
throw of Social Evils," are among the best in the book, and deserve a 
careful and thoughtful reading. 



CRAKSTON <& CXJRXS, Publ^ishkr^, 
CINCINNATI, CHICAGO, ST. LOUIS. 



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